


If I should call you up, invest a dime

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Series: beauty, grace, punches in the face [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Angst, AoU Compliant, F/M, Romance, Spoilers, tumblr prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 49
Words: 42,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3106214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr Prompt Fills for Captain Hill.</p><p>Now AoU Compliant! Spoilers abound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Elderly Neighbour + Mistletoe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> puckering-gustin asked: Captain Hill - your next door neighbour who are an elderly couple invites us to their christmas party and they think we’re a couple and somehow we have to kiss

He feels the hand in his shirt, the yank backwards into the tiny entrance way of her neighbours’ apartment. Maria’s face is stone. He hates stone-faced Maria. 

"They think we’re dating." 

Steve looks back to the clanging sounds in the kitchen. He likes Maria’s elderly neighbours. He likes Maria with her elderly neighbours. So yes, when Mrs. Ferris had invited him for “a quiet Christmas dinner”, Steve had agreed. He’d been happy to agree. 

"Maria," he replies quietly, keeps his tone a little incredulous. Because okay, yes, he wants to date Maria (who wouldn’t?) but he feels like she’s made it clear that there’s only friendship in the cards for them. 

She growls. “I’m not wrong.”

"Okay," he replies, immediately placating. "Maybe you’re not. What difference does it make?"

"Have you ever had elderly neighbours?" she hisses. “‘He’s such a nice young man!’, ‘Maria, dear, you aren’t getting younger.’, ‘He’s a superhero, you’re not going to get much better.’"

Her exaggerated shiver makes him smile. But more than that, he can’t stop the way his heart leaps. Not a single example she’d uttered had been a denial of feelings for him. She hadn’t shut down the possibility. And he will be the eternal optimist, he thinks. It’s a slim hope, he knows, but it is one he can feel himself start to cling to. 

"They don’t actually say the superhero thing, do they?"

Maria rolls her eyes. “Everyone does when they see us together, Steve. It may escape your notice when you’re not in the suit, but you’re Captain freaking America.”

"What does that have to do with us dating?"

She growls again. He shouldn’t find it entertaining, riling her up like this, but he likes the spark that fires in her eyes. And he likes that she hasn’t once spoken of her own feelings. 

"My name’s out there too. On documents and authorizations that helped Hydra grow within SHIELD. My face is plastered all over the place because of the circus that was the senate hearings. That is not the name people want to associate with their precious national icon."

He takes a chance and steps closer, his heart hammering in his ears. “What about Steve Rogers?”

"What?"

He loves the furrow in her brow, feels his fingers twitch to smooth it away. “What if Steve Rogers doesn’t care about what ‘people’ say?”

"You don’t get a choice," she answers quietly. "The Avengers maintain their status because of the faith people have in your ability to protect them from all threats. Public opinion sways in your favour. The publicity-"

It’s his turn to growl and it cuts her off immediately. He doesn’t realize he’s reached for her until his hand is already in her hair. “Publicity. God, Maria, do you think I care?” 

"You will when they start speculating; when they start telling you the paragon of American freedom really shouldn’t be seeing the woman they all partially blame for Insight and the Triskelion."

"No one blames you."

"Oh, but they do," she replies in the tone he hates. It always makes her sound like she thinks he’s being an idiot. 

"I don’t care," he repeats, low and firm. "I never cared."

She deflates like there’s no argument left. He worries for a moment if he’ll have to catch her, but she braces her hands against his chest. 

"There you are! Everything alright?" 

It’s terrible timing, he thinks, his eyes falling closed. Maria’s already stepping around him, maybe giving him the chance to collect himself with his back to Mrs. Ferris. He feels his hand slip from her hair.

"Everything’s fine," she’s saying with that easy smile. 

"I should think so, dear," Mrs. Ferris says, and Steve can hear amusement in her voice. "Jim and I hung that mistletoe to bother our grandkids, but I’m glad to see others getting some use out of it."

It rises in Steve so fast, the punk attitude that got him in too many fights, that left his mother and Bucky lecturing him while pressing peas to his face. 

"I don’t know, Mrs Ferris," he finds himself saying. He reaches for Maria, hooks his arm around her waist. She comes easily, her eyebrow arched. "Maria thinks it’s an overrated tradition."

She’s going to hit him. He can see it in her face.

"Oh my dear, a man like that and you don’t want to take advantage of the mistletoe?"

He could kiss the woman. With or without mistletoe, he really could. 

"Mrs. Ferris-"

"Go on and kiss the man, Maria! It’s tradition."

But Steve, who has turned into her body catches the woman’s broad wink. “Yeah Maria,” he goads because the adrenaline’s still rising, still pounding, challenge and thrill both. “It’s tradition.”

It’s enough.

She gets her hands on his ears and yanks his head down. When their mouths meet, he’s thankful he’d seen it coming. She is ruthless, this kiss a punishment as well as a pleasure. He does not care. He pulls her in, fights right back and lets himself drown in the feel and taste of her. When they separate, Mrs Ferris has disappeared and Maria’s eyes are wonderfully glazed. He cups her cheek, waits for her eyes to clear. 

"Want to reconsider?" he asks, voice low and rough. 

Trepidation rises in her eyes - he’s not stupid enough to think a kiss, even one as hot as they’ve just shared, is enough to battle back all of her worries - but so does a strange kind of amused resignation.

"It’ll take more than a kiss to change my mind, Captain," she says, finally stepping away and further into the apartment. "You may want to start with drinks."

He grins as he follows along behind her, then doubles back for the mistletoe. He has the perfect place in Maria’s apartment to hang it. 


	2. Kisses Meme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kisses Meme Prompts

**Spiderman Kiss**

Steve is a tactile man. It’s something Maria learns very early in their thing-they’re-not-calling-a-relationship and something she finds almost surprising. She shouldn’t, really, because he often talks about how important it is to leave nothing unsaid, to make sure those that really matter know that they do. And he certainly shows her, despite their rules about keeping everything behind closed doors and her entirely skittish nature when it comes to this stuff. 

It all kind of collapses one night at Avengers Tower though. Between her job at Stark Industries and the support she’s been offering Steve in finding The Winter Soldier (she can’t quite get over the hurdle of referring to him by his official name) she’s been basically accepted as at least friend. So every once in a while, she attends these huge dinners Stark throws with all of the Avengers and their significant others. 

He’s leaning over to place her coffee on the table. She has no idea what makes her tilt her head back, but his eyes flick to hers and then down to her lips and she knows what’s coming. Except this time, she doesn’t stop it, doesn’t move away. She lets him press his mouth to hers, upside down and a little awkward with her neck straining the way it is, but the way his hand slides up her arm and the surprised smile on his face when he pulls back is entirely worth it. Even if she ends up murdering Stark for his inability to keep his damn mouth shut. 

. . .

**Jawline Kiss**

Sometimes, after they’ve made love - because he refuses to call it anything else and sometimes, though she’ll never admit it to him, it feels like that’s exactly what it is - his head drops to the juncture of her shoulder and neck and he just breathes. It doesn’t make sense at first, she really just chalks it up to his body giving out with the intensity of their actions, but the first time he drops all of his weight there she realizes that that’s not it at all. 

"Maria."

And the way he says her name is beautiful and wonderful, awe and amazement wrapped up in an emotion she still refuses to name. It leaves her breath catching in her chest as her fingers dig into the muscles of his back and she realizes with a stunning clarity that, to him, this is overwhelming. 

She forgets so often that he still thinks of himself as that skinny, sickly kid from Brooklyn, that he doesn’t remember he’s so much stronger, so much heavier, that he deserves so much more than her battered, bruised and broken heart. He’s been diligent in his use of glue and there are only a few spots that are barely held together with old ratty Scotch tape, but they both have their bad days. 

So she swallows around the lump of emotion in her throat, her own overwhelming feelings and the words that want to climb out of her throat. She kisses him instead, plants her lips along his jawline as best she can to sooth him and finds to her eternal shock that one day, she hopes she can actually use words to tell him she’s not going anywhere. 

 


	3. Fake Relationship

He’s the last one to the bar. It’s not new or unique by any extent of the imagination - he gets wrapped up when he rides his bike, okay? - but he is admittedly more than a little out of breath as he tugs off his leather jacket. 

"Oh thank God," Maria says, grasping his hand. "Dance with me."

A million things explode at those little words, memories and fears and hopes and moments and- “Maria?”

"Just do it, Rogers."

He knows better to argue, both because of the tone in her voice and because, well, it’s Maria. Whatever’s going on… It’s Maria. 

She tugs him to the makeshift dance floor before plastering herself to him from shoulder to knee and  _grinding_. 

"Maria," he hisses, hands coming up to grasp her hips. He can’t do this with her for a million reasons that start with  _we work together_  and end somewhere around  _it’s too tempting_. But when he looks at her, everything is brittle and instead of pushing her away, his hand slides around to spread against her back. 

He ignores the tremble that races through her - because it isn’t real and he is totally projecting, thank you very much - and nudges against her, gets her moving. And tries very hard not to look smug when she almost stumbles in surprise. He’s not sorry for it though, because it forces her to lean into the hand he has on her back and grip at his arms. 

He likes Maria when she’s off-balance. 

"Romanov teach you?" she asks after a few moments of moving with his lead.

"Darcy, actually," Steve says with a bit of a laugh. It’s not that he’s ever been incapable, thanks. Just… well, hadn’t had the right damn partner. But Darcy had been insistent - bored - and he’s not stupid enough to ever put up an argument. 

Then, just because he can, he spins her around, pulls her back in. It surprises a laugh out of her a second before he notices the man watching with narrowed eyes. 

"Want to read me in?" 

She glances over her shoulder and hisses. “He’s been trailing me all night.”

He doesn’t realize he’s shifting - protective or offensive, he’s not sure - until she hisses into his ear. His body stills, shivers. 

"Don’t. Not like that." She actually rolls her eyes. "God, Rogers, do you think he’d even be walking if it were that?"

He concedes the point. Gracefully, he thinks. “And admirer?”

She snorts. “Physically, maybe, and drunk enough not to get the signal. Look, just… Pretend we’re dating or something, okay?”

He grunts softly. “Is that a thing? I thought Natasha was making it up.”

"That women pretend to have significant others in bars?" She rolls her eyes. "Chivalry is dead."

He disagrees, wants to disagree out loud and vehemently but then the guy is coming towards them and Steve feels his hands tighten on her waist. She comes willingly, gets her arms up around his neck, even threads one hand through his hair and yes, yes he’s been on undercover missions since the fall of SHIELD, but not with Maria and  _never_  in this close proximity. He is human, okay? He has reactions to beautiful, capable women and-

"Dude. The hell?"

Steve’s head comes up - had he really been staring at the skin of her neck, dreaming of what it would feel like to press is mouth there, feel her arch into the press of his body - and he regards the man with a slightly narrowed gaze. Drunk, he thinks. 

"Can I help you?"

"I saw her first."

That sends Steve’s eyebrows up to his hairline. Did he miss the regression to kindergarten?

"The lady’s not interested."

"So you her mouth now too, not just her muscle?"

He  _feels_ Maria bristle, presses his fingers into her hip. He can feel the frown that pulls her lips down - they’re standing so close, so, so close - the pinch she delivers to his forearm. But then she has a hand trailing up his back, cupping his neck, and right when he opens his mouth to retort - witty and smart, not possessive because Maria is not a possession and sure as hell isn’t his anyway - she threads her hand through his hair, pulls back and kisses him. 

It barely takes him a second to get over his surprise because he can be an opportunist and this is  _Maria_. He cups her skull, presses her hips into his, and gives her everything he’s got. It gets worse when she moans, when her head hips back in a surrender he takes greedily. He nips at her jaw, gets a gasp in response and growls. 

Then someone runs into him from behind, nudges him a few steps forward and he finds himself catching them both. It knocks them out of it though and he finds himself staring down at her. He remembers - too late, he thinks - and looks up, but her would-be suitor is nowhere in sight. 

"Worked," he pants, sets her a safe distance away. "He’s gone."

He hates that she looks less flustered than he does, that her eyes are clear despite the way her lips are swollen.

"Good." Then her head tips to the side. "You’re not as bad at undercover as Romanov says." 

_Because he isn’t pretending._

"Thanks."

She nods, then steps back. He wants to let her go - has to let her go - but she makes it so much harder when she reaches up to her mouth and wipes her thumb at the corner. He can almost feel the tension in his body, the way he lists towards her like he’s going to take her up in his arms again, wrap her against him and just devour her. But he is a civilized man and he drags it all back in. 

She leads the way to a dark booth in the back corner, Pepper and Tony cuddled into the corner, Bruce nursing a beer. 

"You’re here!" Pepper says enthusiastically because she is always happy to see him. Steve slips into the booth, valiantly trying not to think of the woman who slips across from him, the press of her body and the warmth of her mouth. 

(Later, much later, when the crowd is thinning out, Maria picks up his hand again, drags him back to the dance floor. He goes, like a moth to a flame. She tells him to take her home and his  _entire body_ responds, right up until she falls asleep on his shoulder and he has to carry her up four flights of steep, steep stairs. 

Nothing happens that night - she is exhausted and maybe a little drunk - but in the morning she emerges with warm, soft, just Maria eyes and this time when she kisses him, he lets her. When she hoists herself up on the counter, he moves with her, slipping into the space she makes between her thighs. When she pulls off the t-shirt he’d very carefully slipped her into, he carries her into the bedroom.

There’s nothing fake about what happens after that.)


	4. Massages

When he looks back on it, the weirdest part is actually that she starts it. 

She does it in pure Maria fashion, of course. He’s particularly sore from the last mission, his body itching as it heels and he cannot sit still to save his life. The debrief feels like it’s taking forever and he just wants to go home and sleep for a year. 

“Rogers.”

He looks up to find it’s just the two of them left, his team probably having departed the second she began her sentence to end the debrief. 

“I’m fine, I’m good,” he says out of habit. “Nothing a good sleep won’t fix.”

He doesn’t fool her, of course. He’s a terrible liar and she’s rather adept at seeing through his every attempt. “Pinched nerve?”

“Sore,” he says on a sigh, because they both know with a couple of texts she can have his medical report in her inbox. She watches him for a minute, considering, then slips around her desk. He jolts when her hands rest on his shoulders, his body stiffening painfully. 

"Trust me."

He has to force his shoulders to relax. The minute he does, she digs her thumbs into his back and he hisses. 

"Don’t be a baby, Rogers."

So he closes his eyes, tries not to think of the fact that Maria Hill is currently massaging the kinks out of his muscles. He’s not sure when he zones out, but he definitely feels her flick on her ear. 

"Try moving," she tells him, face blank. 

He shuffles his shoulders, rolls them. He’s surprised to find he moves a bit easier now, doesn’t feel like one giant ache. She shrugs when he looks back at her. 

"Did a mission undercover," she offers in a way that makes him think that answer is both true and her answer for everything. Still, he takes it at face value and offers her a small smile. 

"Thank you."

He gets a quick nod and a final order to get some rest and submit his report in the morning. 

* * *

He doesn’t remember when she started coming to these “Team Nights”, all he knows as he looks over half way through Pepper’s obscure cinema pick is that her neck is going to hurt when she wakes. She’s curled in the smallest ball she can make beside Barton on the other couch and he’s found himself looking over to her maybe more than he should. 

He hasn’t been able to get her out of his mind, if he’s honest. He’s always taken Maria to be the strong, silent type, more likely to deliver a lecture than support. But then he thinks of her hands on his shoulders, the easy with which he’d moved afterwards, the way Barton always stations himself to one side of her and Natasha to the other. Her troops are loyal to her, that much is obvious and as they work together he finds he starts to understand where that loyalty comes from. 

She doesn’t budge. She works harder than anyone he’s seen. She knows each mission inside out and backwards (he wonders if she sleeps), and has absolutely no qualms submitting revisions to anyone assigned to her. (He remembers the first time he’d received an updated mission in his inbox, the instinctive revolt that someone would put that much red on the page and the respect that had followed when he’d realized just how many holes she’d managed to fill.) 

She inspires loyalty because she brings her people back alive and in one piece. 

And so he’d done what he could to lighten her load. He writes his reports quickly, efficiently. He finds himself bringing her coffee when he delivers said reports, maybe enticing her out to lunch when they have details to go over. He brings lunch when she refuses to leave the helicarrier and doesn’t argue when she sends him on ‘missions’ that are both training exercises (he’s partially appalled at the weapons development of the twenty-first century and partially impressed) and troop morale boosters (training with Captain America?!) 

So when the movie credits roll, and Tony immediately slams Pepper’s choice, sparking the debate that tends to follow these kind of nights, Steve finds his eyes drawn to the way Maria comes alert with a wince. Barton says something to her, under the sparking argument that Bruce has been dragged into (and from the look on Natasha’s face, she isn’t far behind), and she shakes her head, even as her hand comes up to rub at her neck. 

Then Barton’s moving away, leaving Maria alone on that couch to join the debate that’s shifted to the kitchenette. And he moves. 

His hand presses against hers and she glances up, startled. He smiles, a Steve smile, not the one Natasha teases is his Captain America Smile (with full caps, thank you very much). 

"Trust me."

It takes her a moment before she slowly lowers her hand. 

At first he just runs his thumbs down the side of her neck, finds himself irrationally surprised by how much tension he finds stored in her shoulders. When he feels her shoulders droop he digs in, just a little, just enough. She gasps, a quick short sound before her body shakes with her exhale. Her body goes liquid, pliant, trusting. 

(For a moment, a different picture flashes through his head, but he knows it’s an impossible dream. Maria Hill doesn’t see Steve Rogers. She sees Captain America, purveyor of truth, justice and the American way. A tool.

It’s too bad he can see the woman as much as the warrior.)

The argument dies down around them, but Steve is really only focused on Maria and the crick she’d managed to nap into her neck. Eventually with one last stroke of his thumb down the back of her neck (she does not shudder, because that  _means things_  and it just… It can’t because he won’t get his hopes up) he steps back. 

She tilts her head from one side to the other, looks left, then right, before she turns those ice blue eyes on him. Except there’s nothing cold about the look there, surprise and a thankfulness, definitely and he thinks it’s more emotion than he’s seen from her in a long time. 

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

(He means it in more ways than she takes it, he knows, finds himself absently wondering not only if she’s blind to what he feels growing, but if she could even for a moment consider it a possibility. He doubts the latter, the same way he doubts the former. 

It’s just not Maria.)

* * *

In the aftermath of Project Insight, the Triskelion, any Hydra, he doesn’t see Maria much. She visits him in the hospital once to offer her ‘services’ (Sam makes him swear never to utter that sentence again. Apparently the walls have ears) but it’s about six months before he sees her again. 

She looks thinner, he thinks. Thinner and more worn, like she’s doing three different jobs instead of one. It’s never come out in her updates, email or phone, and she hasn’t once turned down a single request when he’s called for information on Bucky. He should have known and he hates the idea that he’s been part of what’s put that look on her face. 

"Rogers."

He tries a smile, knows it falls flat. He’s missed her, yes, but as he looks at her now he thinks maybe it’s more than just ‘miss’. He can feel the way his fingers twitch to touch her, to get his hands on her and wrap her up, protect her from this new world where Fury’s ‘dead’, Coulson’s not, and Hydra’s wreaking havoc across the globe. She doesn’t need it, he knows (Maria Hill can more than take care of herself) but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to do it. 

"Maria."

She startles at her first name and he finds himself wondering for a blink if maybe it’s the first time he’s ever used it. And then he is reaching for her, cupping her cheek against his conscious will, brushing a thumb along the circles deep enough that even makeup can’t hide them. 

There’s resignation in her eyes when she yanks her face from his grip and he finds his hand on her shoulder instead, keeping her close. Another thrill of surprise whips through him when he realizes she’s not pulling away. 

"No luck?"

He shakes his head. “Bucky doesn’t want to be found.”

She’d told him that, months ago, when he’d first jumped on this goose chase. He can still remember her words, spoken softly in an attempt to soften the blow. 

 _You won’t find Barnes_ , she’d said.  _Barnes will find you_. 

"Hey," he finds himself saying, sliding his hand over her arm until he can grip her hand. "Come here."

She surprises him for the third time when she follows, not demure, but definitely not wholly in control. She’s so tired, he thinks, wonders if mentioning it to Pepper will do any good. He doubts it, knowing Maria, but he finds himself settling on the small couch in the cozy seating area that dominates one corner of her office, manoeuvring her until she’s facing the door. His thumbs dig into either side of her spine and much like the first time, a gasp gives way to a shudder before she goes soft. 

"You’re not sleeping," he says, unsurprised when he doesn’t get a response. It’s not like the statement really invited one. "Are you eating?" 

"You’re not my mother, Rogers."

Maybe not, he thinks, but he can feel every ridge of her spine, thinks maybe he could count her ribs without much effort. She still has the muscle, but her face is long and drawn. 

"Do I have to be related to you to give a damn, Lieutenant?" 

He’s not sure which part of the statement did it, the admission that he cares or her rank, but she’s off like a shot, facing him with a blank face. Stoic face. A face that means beneath that cool exterior he’s hit a nerve. 

 _Good_ , he thinks.  _Maybe it’s about time someone pushed her buttons_. 

"I don’t have anything for you," she says, her voice hard. "I’m sure you can see yourself out."

He stops in front of her on the way to the door, knowing with an instinct born of practice that she will not let herself look away. So she sees the determination in his gaze as he says, “I’ll be seeing you, Maria.”

 _Soon_.

* * *

He’s pacing outside of Stark’s medical wing when she finds him. He’s surprised to see her there, if he’s honest, surprised and pleased because he feels like he’s fraying around the edges while the doctors (and Bruce with Natasha looking on, face hard and stubborn as she ever is) inspect none other than Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.

"Did you know?"

It’s accusatory, but she doesn’t budge. “Natasha knew.”

 _And told me_. It’s a phrase she doesn’t need to say. There’s a part of him that’s glad Natasha wasn’t the only one to know where Bucky’s been all this time and a part of him that feels betrayed. 

"How long?"

"Couple of months."

That’s strangely reassuring. He hasn’t been looking in almost half a year, been taking Hydra-related missions from Maria and sometimes, rarely, from Coulson. It’s a strange comfort to know that she hadn’t been sabotaging his efforts. 

"She wanted a chance to bring him in," Maria reveals. "Like Barton."

He finds himself snorting, a kind of hysterical humour to it. Otherwise he thinks he’ll rip apart at the seams. “I thought you were done adopting strays.”

The look she’d given him when she’d met Sam, The look she still gives Barton when Natasha does something reckless. The way she rolls her eyes when Agent May’s around, recapping the brand-new-SHIELD exploits. 

He gets a smile for that, the realest curve of her mouth he’s ever seen. “It’s not that easy to say no to the Black Widow.” 

He has to give her that, he thinks, acknowledges it with a shrug. Then she sighs, hooks a nearby chair with her foot and waves him into it. He goes because he’s fairly used to following her orders, dropping down and propping his elbows on his knees. His head drops into his hands. 

"He’s alive, but he’s a mess, Maria."

He hears her sigh, knows she’s still behind him and yet he jumps when she flattens his palms on her back, when she digs her thumbs into his shoulder blades. 

"According to the files, the number of times he’s been brainwashed is in the triple digits. You’re lucky you managed to tap through to his memories on the Insight carriers."

He shudders at the thought, at the knowledge of what his best friend must have gone through. Her hands start to move in earnest then and he finds himself wondering how much of it is to keep herself steady as much as she’s working out some serious stress in his muscles. 

"I should have gone looking for him," he says. "In the Alps. I didn’t leave him behind when I became Captain America, why didn’t I try and find his body?"

"You had a mission." 

It’s said with such complete conviction, such strength of will that he feels the acceptance of the reasoning despite his guilt. 

"If you’d gone to find him, he’d be dead. You would have collected his body and buried him."

But that’s not what happened, he hears her say, reads between the lines because this is Maria and he’s used to it. Instead of burying him, they’d found him, alive and whole. Steve had his best friend, instead of just the memory, even if Bucky’s mind and memories were a massive jumble of terrible things. 

He hears her sigh, shivers when her thumbs brush gently above the collar of his shirt. 

"Come on. We’ll go up to the common room, get you some coffee."

"He’s in there," he tries. "I can’t just-"

"You can and you will," she says, tone brooking no argument. "You’re not doing anything useful waiting here. Natasha’s in there with him and you know she won’t let them do anything she doesn’t approve of. And if that’s not enough, she’s got Bruce for back up." 

He still wavers, still doesn’t want to just walk away. He hears her sigh. 

"He’s safe, Steve."

He starts. It’s the first time she’s used his given name. 

"He’s safe. He’s not going anywhere."

It takes him another minute, but when she pokes at his shoulder he stands and follows her out of the medical wing. 

* * *

And that’s how it starts. 

Coffee turns to food, food turns to movies and market days and gym sparring. He learns about her and she learns about him and somewhere along the way they add kissing to the mix. Kissing turns to touching and touching, eventually, turns to  _more_. 

He likes the side of Maria he sees after that, soft and vulnerable, caring in ways he’d never anticipating. She can cook, for example, despite the number of people who seem to think that doesn’t mix with the hard-assed agent that still kicks ass in the corporate world the same way she did in the world security world. She can take time off, though he often has to push and cajole until she does. 

And more than that, he definitely prefers working out her knots with his hands on the bare soft skin of her back, rather than through her SHIELD uniform and silk blouses. 

It’s one of those dark nights that it hits him, still coming down from the wonderful high of being with Maria, his hand trailing up and down her back, bouncing over the knobs of her spine. She’s sensitive, shivering with the touch, but she doesn’t arch away. He buries his nose in her shoulder and sighs. 

"You know," she says and he can feel the tension infuse her back. She’s nervous, he realizes and Maria is never nervous. "On paper we shouldn’t work."

He snorts. “A lot of things don’t work on paper.” 

"Steve." 

He hisses when she pinches his shoulder, retaliates with a soft touch down her spine that leaves her breathless and gasping. 

"Okay, so we don’t work on paper. So what?"

"So, how the hell did we get here?" 

The chuckle bubbles out of him as he thinks about it, as he remembers back years to her hands on his neck, the trust he’d put in her hands before he’d realized he was doing it. “My shoulders were sore.”

"What?" she says with her own bark of laughter. 

"My shoulders were sore," he repeats, kissing her shoulder. "And then you ended up with a crick in your neck from sleeping awkwardly on the couch."

"Steve, I’m serious."

"So am I," he answers, eyes sparkling. "It started with massage."

It takes her a minute to put the pieces together, then she laughs. “God, that’s a terrible story.”

He hums a little. “I could say I fell in love with your competence first.”

He hears her little intake of breath, the way her body stiffens. He smooths his hand over her back again, presses his fingers into her lower back. Her body tenses, then gives. 

"I could say I fell in love with your contradictions, with the way you inspire loyalty, even in Tony, who yes, admires you, no matter how much you think he doesn’t."

"Steve-"

"We could say it’s because you never looked at Bucky as a thing or a tool, even though we both know that’s how you saw me for a long time."

She snorts. “It was safer that way.”

And in that moment, he knows, he’s got her. In five words she’d managed to say more than she had in months. He can’t stop himself from tangling his fingers in her hair, pulling her into a deep, grateful, adoring kiss that leaves her eyes dark, her cheeks flushed and her body shifting wonderfully against him again. 

"Or," he says, panting. "We can ignore how we got here and just be glad we did." 

She chuckles, shifts, presses against him in all the right places and laughs, a low, dark thing that has his breath catching. “Let’s go with that.” 

His hand trails down, over the curve of her bottom until he wraps it around the back of her thigh. A second later she’s on her back, staring up at eyes that say every word she’s never let him say. But as she looks back at him, her hand cupping his cheek, he thinks he doesn’t need to say them. She knows, the same way he does. 

And that is way more than enough. 


	5. Grocery shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ribbon'verse. During What Is and Isn't Mine

She isn’t sure when market Saturdays became a Thing. A capital-T-habit-forming Thing. But three months after he showed up at her door to cajole her to the market, she’s sliding jeans over her hips on an early Saturday morning and skimming the headlines on her phone while she waits for his knock. 

He’s made her actually enjoy the freaking market.  _The market_ , where there are crowds of people, a constant adrenaline rush because so-many-civilians-where-are-the-exits and Steve hates it when she carries her gun. But Steve… Steve loves the market, the people, the friends he’s made - the vegetable guy always puts the best tomatoes aside for him - and slips and slides his way through the crowd like he couldn’t care less about whether there’s a Hydra agent hanging in the wings. 

It took her a while to realize that’s the part she likes. 

The knock jolts her a little, and she sets her mug in the sink as she heads for the door. And there he is. 

"Maria."

She is not smiling, but he most certainly is as he hands over the cardboard cup that is his customary form of bribery. “Ready?”

She always is.

She lets him run the show. She loves it, if she’s honest, and it’s another thing - along with the obvious freedom he feels wandering through a market - that she finds she really likes. She doesn’t have to control anything here. She doesn’t have to make decisions. It’s an honest joy to watch him interact with vendors, too. But he also knows way more than she does. He knows which apples are going to taste the best when she bites into them. And if that’s not enough, she knows better than to eat breakfast now. Inevitably, he reaches out for her, ignoring all of her ‘don’t touch’ signs and saying, “Maria, come try this.”

(She’s tried everything from homemade salsas, to strange guacamole, to spaghetti sauce. She’s tried apple pie - which she  _hates_  - and gingerbread cookies - which she _loves_  - and sampled fruits and vegetables at every turn. It’s too much for her stomach to handle most days, but Steve always looks so happy and genuinely likes to hear her opinion on things. Not that anyone needs to know because no, she does not have a massive crush on Steve, they are friends.)

And at the end of it, she curls up on a stool at her tiny island and watches Steve make her dinner from the food they’ve bought at the market. He talks the whole way through, about whatever comes to his mind. Sometimes it’s politics, sometimes it’s stories from his childhood. Sometimes it’s about training with Tony, or the time Clint thought for sure he had the drop on Nat, only to have the Widow dart away at the last second. 

She’ll never tell anyone, but it makes her feel connected. It’s something constant in the insanity and upheaval of her life. It has nothing to do with Steve’s smile, or the way his face softens as he watches her devour whatever he puts in front of her. It has nothing to do with the way he’ll reach out for her on his way out the door, tug her into a hug that she wouldn’t normally give into.

Because Maria Hill can’t be falling in love with Steve Rogers. 

(Except then, inevitably, she does.)


	6. First huge fight

They’re not together when they have their first huge fight. It’s a mutual decision because neither of them are in a position where serious is on their radar. It works though; friendly companionship when they’re in the same city and intimacy without strings. 

Right up until Steve and Natasha disappear to Germany on the trail of the Winter Soldier. ‘Routine’ is the word Phil had used to describe the mission and when Maria checks in with May, the second-in-command - a job Maria finds she doesn’t miss the more she checks in - doesn’t seem to suspect anything different either. 

They hadn’t anticipated the Hydra strike team. 

Because no one had known the base held the brainwashing equipment they’d used on Barnes, on other agents. No one had really considered that Hydra would be tracking back to a facility that had been under their control. And Maria knows the protocol for those situations: leave nothing to salvage. 

Tony is livid when he finds out they hadn’t been able to save the equipment, but that’s not the part of Natasha’s concise report that has Maria’s heart in her throat. 

_Captain Rogers returned to the facility to pull Doctor Binhammer from the wreckage. He was knocked unconscious by the blast._

And hadn’t woken up yet. 

She’s read that line, the two sentences, over and over again, trying to reconcile the fact that it is such a Steve thing to do it should be expected, and the fact that he had been stupid enough to do it. He’d known the thing was going to blow, had authorized the explosion himself with a coldness in his voice that spoke to what he felt of Hydra’s brainwashing program. 

She can remember what it felt like, being on the end of the recording. The moment the explosion had hit, Natasha calling for Steve over the comms, the moment the tac team had found him, whole and in tact and thank God, breathing. She has nightmares about a different scenario, a different situation. 

And so she doesn’t visit him in the hospital. 

She doesn’t track him down when he’s out either, even though he’s only a couple of boroughs away. She can’t. 

Because those nightmares, that fear, has taught her that he matters more than he should. 

Nothing had changed. Not a damn thing. He’s still chasing his not-so-dead friend, they’re still trying to rebuild some semblance of SHIELD, Hydra is still out there, and that’s not to mention the rogues like Whitehall floating around. It’s right up there for the worst timing ever. 

The one thing she hadn’t factored in was Steve. 

It’s late on a Thursday when he tracks her down. Late and early in equal measure, but of course she’s not sleeping. If she has to dream of him dying one more time she’s going to shoot something she shouldn’t. She’s staring at the lights of Manhattan when the knock comes. 

"So you are alive."

Maria rolls her eyes, even as she steps back to let him in. “You knew that.”

He’s quiet as she throws the locks again, tucks her sidearm into the drawer of the nearby hutch. There’s something in his face she doesn’t recognize when she looks back at him.

"That’s the second time I’ve woken from a coma and you haven’t even come by to see how I was doing."

"Pepper kept me updated," she replies. "We had some cleaning up to do. A crater in the ground isn’t exactly easy to explain to governments that didn’t know agents were in there in the first place." 

"Excellent cover. Logical, concise, no details. Nat would be proud."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She doesn’t realize he’s really advancing on her until her back hits the door, until it forces a gasp from her chest. 

"Why didn’t you come, Maria?"

He knows the way he says her name makes her nerves jangle, makes her thighs clench. She rallies, makes sure her face is impassive. “I told you, Rogers-“

"Rogers."

"That is your name."

"And that is your defence mechanism." 

She stares up at him, defiant and surprised in equal measure. 

"Do you want to try again? Without the lies this time?"

No. No she doesn’t. He can see it on her face and sighs. There’s a part of her that expects him to step back, to walk away because they both know she’ll never give in. But as is his habit, he surprises her by stepping back, giving her space. His hands fall limply to his sides. 

"I wanted you there."

Her breath stops in her chest. 

"The first time because then I would know you were okay, that the Triskelion hadn’t killed you." He laughs a little bitterly. "I heard from Pepper you’d been hired on at Stark."

She remembers that. Remembers the flowers and his sheepish face showing up at her office door. Isn’t that how this had begun? A weakness, a moment where she’d let him take her for coffee, where they’d updated each other on their lives. And then a week later, drinks and his hand on her back, tumbling her to his bed and making her see stars. 

"This time… Because I wanted to know you cared."

_Of course I care._

It’s so easy to say, right on the tip of her tongue. But, of course, that’s not what she says. 

"It was a stupid thing to do."

His shoulders slump. She swallows. 

"You set those damn explosives, Steve. You knew when they were going to go off. You knew you weren’t going to make it. But you went back in, for a damn Hydra scientist that wasn’t even supposed to be there in the first place."

"Intel. He’ll be valuable-"

"Like Zola was? Like Whitehall? Get your head in the game."

His eyes narrow, but he doesn’t flinch. She hates that he doesn’t flinch. 

"You risked your damn life, and for what?" she asks, stepping forward and stabbing her finger into his chest. "For what?"

"For a chance. For Bucky and his deprogramming when we find him. For information on what they did and how they did it," he growls. "But you knew that."

And the agent in her had applauded. The woman, however. 

"So that begs the question," he goes on, reaching for her wrists, holding them such that she knows she isn’t going anywhere. "Knowing that you would have done the same thing, that you would have put your life on the line for that intel, why are you so mad at me?" 

"Because you could have died!"

She thinks, in hindsight, it’s the vehemence with which she delivers the line that does it. Vehemence and volume that has his grip loosening enough for her to pull her hands from his grasp. Her vision blurs and she curses him and herself, her emotions and the fact that somewhere along the way he’d damn well belly crawled under her defences to end up on the other side. 

"Because you could have died, you could have left, and then what? Tell me Steve, what happens when you-" She chokes on the words, so many memories, so many losses. "What happens when you don’t come back?" 

He doesn’t have the answer she wants. They both know that. He can’t promise her he’ll come back every time and she’s not convinced she’d want him to anyway. It comes with the territory, for him and for her. 

When she looks up at him he’s stunned. Stunned and awed as he looks down at her. This time she does flinch when he reaches for her, when he brushes a tear from her cheek. She’s tired, that’s all. She’s exhausted and emotional because she hasn’t slept since his return and-

"Maria," he whispers, and when the hell had he bent down to her? "Maria, I can’t lose you either."

The fight goes out of her in one long breath just before his mouth meets hers. She presses up on her toes despite herself, all too familiar with the taste and feel of him. Her hands rise to his biceps, curl and dig. He presses closer, harder, holds her close just the way she likes. 

"It wasn’t supposed to be anything," he says to her cheek when they break apart. "You never wanted it to be anything and it’s a mess, but Maria.  _Maria_.”

"Yes."

She has no idea what she’s agreeing to, no idea if it’s really something she should be agreeing to. It’s going to explode, she knows. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to be a long-fought battle that neither of them are ready for. 

But when he scoops her up, spreads her legs around his hips and presses her against the door, she thinks she’s glad he came to find her. 


	7. I know you had a lot to do, I'm glad you paused for a while

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sitwell may have been right. Her connection to Rogers is definitely a liability. But it’s Sitwell’s fault to begin with. 
> 
>  
> 
> _Or: the five things Maria taught Steve about the twenty first century and the one thing she didn’t have to._

**1\. Texting Shorthand**

Look, she is not in charge of bringing Captain America up to speed on the twenty-first century now that the alien invasion has passed. She wouldn’t even sign up for it if the position were available. No way, no how.

It’s nothing personal. She likes Steve, genuinely, probably more than she should. But the thing is, she is, for all intents and purposes, his boss. So she keeps him safely tucked in a box labeled ‘extremely useful tool’. For her own well-being, of course.

He’s an excellent soldier, as it turns out, more than happy to take on even the grungiest and dirtiest of missions without complaint. He rivals her for workaholic status and, very grudgingly, it’s something she comes to admire. Yet, his box doesn’t change. Nor does it change when she discovers he has a very dry sense of humour, nor a quiet pride both when he successfully understands pop culture references and when he manages to prank Tony and Natasha.

He stays in her ‘tool’ box right up until she all but literally runs into him muttering to himself as he stares at his phone.

She expects anger to be her first emotion, no matter how many other facets of him she’s come to discover. She abhors all of the implications that Steve can’t figure out this new time of his on his own. But it’s amusement that slides through her first. What follows can only be explained as a moment of weakness on her part because she feels herself looking up at the little furrow in his brow, the confusion in his gaze, and feels affection race through her.

“Captain.”

He looks up, face clearing with the exception of a little twitch at the corner of his mouth. Had she ever noticed that during their debriefs; the gentle way his eyes warm, the way his body cants towards hers.

“Lieutenant.”

Maria finds herself tucking her tablet beneath her arm, holding out her hand, ostensibly for the phone. “Something I can help you with?”

She resolutely refuses to think of the sheepish look he presents her with as adorable. “Natasha keeps texting me,” he replies, a blush crawling over his cheeks, “but it’s… it’s some kind of code and I can’t-“

She sighs – and swears to herself she will never admit just how fake her exasperation is – and plucks the device from his hand.

Steve’s message is straight forward: _Nat, I don’t know what you’re saying. Speak English._

But Natasha’s… well.

_ROTFLMAO. ur SOL soldier. Off 2 SA. CYA while I’m gone._

Maria snorts. It’s only funny because her conversations with the Black Widow not only include full words but also near perfect punctuation. “She’s laughing at you,” Maria eventually says, when she’s sure her voice won’t shake with laughter. “And telling you to stay safe while she’s in South America, which she shouldn’t be sharing.”

Steve frowns. “I like knowing where my people are going.”

“Your people.”

His cheeks flush redder. “My team.”

Maria finds herself nodding once before handing the phone back to him, surprise at how unsettles his possession leaves her and unsure as to why. His fingers brush hers as he takes the phone back.

“Agent Romanov is a SHIELD asset, Captain.”

His spine stiffens and she frowns, promising herself it’s isn’t because his defensiveness is unsettling, that the way his face shutters isn’t something that sends her stomach flipping in nauseating ways.

“Of course, ma’am.”

She watches him walk away unsettles and uncomfortable, resolutely and stubbornly telling herself to just let it go. So she has literally no idea why twenty minutes later she finds herself hunting down links to information on text speak.

 _You may want to add these to your study materials on the 21 st century_, she writes with the links before she forces herself to put both Captain America and Steve Rogers out of her mind.

 

**2\. Farmer’s Markets & Blogging**

It takes him a while to get used to the food. It may be bigger than he’s used to, but he can’t say it tastes anywhere near the same. It’s an endless source of frustration for him. Is it really so hard to find a good apple these days?

He hears a snort and realizes belatedly that he’d said it aloud. Lieutenant Hill is behind him and he finds himself stiffening despite himself. It’s not like he wants to, he’d very much like to be on friendly terms with her. But no matter how much he tries, she seems dead-set on keeping distance between them. So, instead, she puts him on edge.

“It’s cafeteria food, Rogers,” she tells him with a little smile he shouldn’t like so much flirting at the corner of her mouth. She’s a little scratched, a little bruised from their last mission but he is admittedly pretty damn glad she’s alive. “It’s not a five-star restaurant. You could always bring your own lunch.”

He debates with himself for a moment, but he can’t lie and say that the way Hill holds herself away doesn’t make her just a little more intriguing. “I hate grocery stores.”

She seems to consider him for a moment before she sets her tray aside to pull her phone from her pocket. “Here,” she says, her fingers flying over the screen of her phone, absently typing from memory. “Saturday, 8-5. You may find it’s more your speed.”

He’s not quite sure what to do with the stalls he finds at 225 Seventh Street SE until he starts wandering through. He gets the surprise of a lifetime when he finds Maria, fingers dancing in the air over a selection of summer berries. She looks better, he thinks, a little more healed, a little more whole.

“Lieutenant Hill.”

“Captain, you made it.”

He’s surprised to find her so casual, so at ease. There are nerves in the back of her eyes, sure, but her shoulders aren’t hunched, her hand settled on the little cross-body bag she carries. This is a different Maria and he isn’t oblivious to the honour.

“What is this place?”

Okay, the smile she tries for is a little uncomfortable and he’s surprised it’s taken him this long to recognize the olive branch.

“A farmer’s market.”

“Sorry?”

“Farmer’s market,” she repeats, turning back to the berries. She speaks quietly to the woman behind the stall in fluent and smooth Spanish – and Steve really needs to stop thinking about it because off-limits is an understatement when it comes to this woman – exchanging money for a carton of blueberries.

She offers the box to him as he steps up, like it’s something they do all the time rather than something that utterly floors him, and he graciously accepts a few berries.

“Less overwhelming than a grocery store, and the produce is often better,” she explains slipping to the next booth. Tree fruits, and she selects a handful of apples, then an extra she tosses to him. A couple of quick words with the stall owner and they move on, Steve falling into easy step with her.

The next stall is vegetables and he watches her pick out lettuce and tomatoes, even a couple of peppers. She glances over at him. “This one happens every day, actually. 8-5 is Saturdays and Sundays. There are more people.”

“I would think that would put you on edge.”

It certainly isn’t doing much for his nerves, the idea that something could be flitting about, the knowledge that she has enemies that are covert with the power and influence to hire assassins. He will never admit he put two and two together from her file and the listed attacks on her, her numerous residences and safe houses.

“How did you find this place?”

“A blog,” she answers, and he’s treated to the soft smile she offers the stall attendant as she looks over a selection of cheeses. The man gravitates towards her and he finds himself wondering if she even notices, if she even knows it’s a thing that happened. It’s the fourth one he’s watched move towards her with such ease. Natasha, he knows, does it on purpose, but watching Maria, he’d bet on the fact that she has no idea.

Maria is meant to be unassuming, is meant to come across as entirely unimportant when the things that she knows could topple regimes.

“A blog?”

She glances over at him, gauging his reaction. “Someone posted about it on the internet. Have you seen any blogs?”

Normally, a question like that would bother him, would put him on edge and remind him that he’s not meant to be here. It’s historically highlighted his position as a Man Out of Time. But the gentle tone to Maria’s voice, the honest question she uses to frame the sentence doesn’t set him on edge like he’s used to.

“Probably?”

She chuckles a little, shuffles the bag that holds her groceries around until she can pull her phone out. He recognizes the little bird app – Twitter, his mind supplies – and with a few deft flicks she’s pulled up a singular profile.

“This guy runs a blog. A food blog. He’s good.”

So Steve clicks on one of the little blue links – it’s Darcy, on a quick two-month stopover in DC with Jane before they’d both headed off to London, who had introduced him to this ‘most basic’ social media platform, so he has some vague familiarity with using it – and an internet window opens.

 _How the New York City Meatball Helped Build Italian-American Cuisine_ the headline reads, and Steve devours it, from the distinct difference between American and Italian meatballs to the history behind why, to Italians, spaghetti and meatballs do not mean the same thing as they do to Steve’s favourite Brooklyn restaurant. It’s so interesting that he hits the back button, and goes on to another one about eclairs, then New York barbeque.

“Told you so.”

He looks up to find Maria in front of him, arms full of bulging bags. He offers her a genuine smile, the kind he can’t help when he’s found something else to help him acclimate to his new time. “This guy is amazing! It’s not just the food, it’s the history, the culture.”

Her eyes sparkle and it doesn't take a genius to figure out she’s laughing at him.

“Come on,” she says. “I’ll cart this stuff home and introduce you to Wikipedia and All Recipes. We’ll never see you again.”

 

**3\. Food Trucks & Instagram**

After the farmer’s market – and the utter brilliance that had been his face while he explored All Recipes on her laptop – Maria discovers that maybe her initial adamant reaction to not being part of getting Captain America acclimated to the twenty-first century had been premature. As it turns out, somewhere along the way she’s kind of become his modern day guru.

He texts her questions now, and she actually doesn’t mind replying, debating the usefulness of Urban Dictionary and Adobe’s Creative Suite. (It turns out as cool as Steve finds Illustrator, he flat out refuses to turn entirely to technology. Maria doesn’t mind, but she also doesn’t show another human being the handful of drawings she’s collected like a magpie.)

They’re in New York City, meetings and pressing the flesh at the United Nations. Neither of them like it that much, but Maria’s taken the opportunity to catch up with Pepper and Steve, well. He’s off exploring the neighbourhoods of old. At least, that’s what she assumes given the barrage of texts.

 _Speak of the devil_ , she thinks, her phone vibrating in her lap.

_I just had the best hot dog ever. Better than Coney Island._

Maria looks down at the text with a fond roll of her eyes – there’s no one around to see it, in the little office she’s commandeered at Stark because Pepper _loves_ her – and flicks open the message app.

_Anything is better than Coney Island._

_Bad experience?_

She snorts. _New York is the city of food trucks. Trust me, you can always find something better._

_Prove it._

She reads the message three, four times, checks her watch and her to-do list. Oh, oh she can afford an hour to prove to Steve Rogers, a man who has become quite the connoisseur of food since she’d introduced him to foodie blogs and the sheer amount of ethic ingredients one could buy these days, that New York’s food truck culture is entirely unrivaled.

She switches apps quickly, shifts through her Instagram news feed – she is a secret agent with a secret identity, but even Maria Hill is a sucker for the Slumber filter – and grins.

 _E 30 th & 3rd_, she types. _20 minutes_.

He’s already there when she reaches the street corner and catches sight of the tiger-striped car, the all-famous Korilla BBQ.

“Hey,” he greets softly, his hand coming to cup her elbow. She’s used to it, his seemingly subconscious need to touch, like a reaffirmation. It doesn’t bother her anymore.

“Hey.” She uses the grip on her elbow to steer him across the street and towards the food truck. “Ready?”

“What are we doing?”

She waves to the truck. “Number one food truck in New York City. Korean tacos.”

His eyes go wide. “From a truck?”

“You must have bought your hot dog from a truck,” she says as she steps up to the window. She rattles off an order like a pro and very resolutely ignores the admiration on Steve’s face. It’s not the first time she’s seen it, but it’s not something she can acknowledge.

(She’s not good for him, not the way he seems to want her to be. She has literally too many secrets and she knows how he feels about secret keeping. Between that and his rather consistent need to throw himself into the path of danger – not to mention her own enemies and the danger she brings with her – it’s a recipe for disaster.

She does everything in her power to avoid disaster.)

She accepts the little tacos, handing his off to him without ceremony. She bites into her own, moans a little because God, it is good. Steve follows suit and she watches him take his time chewing before the smile spreads across his face.

“That is good.”

“Would I let you down?” she asks with a smile.

His face, however, is serious. “Never.”

She swallows around the lump that’s suddenly formed in her throat and finds her mind scrambling for a way to change the topic, to switch focus. Her eyes dart around until they catch on the little camera icon on the van.

“Hey come here.”

She moves him around, maneuvers his hand and his lunch until she can get them both in the frame. Then she pulls up Instagram.

“What’s that?” he asks, looking over her shoulder. She can feel his breath against her shoulder and clamps down hard on the shiver that wants to race through her spine.

“Did Darcy tell you about Instagram?”

He blinks at her screen as she applies her filter, adjusts some of the lighting to account for the bright New York sun. “No?” He huffs. “Why are there so many?”

“This one’s for pictures,” she says with a little hum.

She feels him lean in a little more, right against her ear. “The Deputy Director of SHIELD has social media accounts?”

She bites the inside of her cheek. Hard. “I’m careful. It’s not like anyone could ever make the connection.”

She taps the screen, the little notification above the picture of their Korean tacos, his thick fingers brushing against her long thin ones. It looks like a Twitter handle, so he assumes it’s her user name.

“Robin Sparkles?”

He looks up at her and sees an honest-to-God blush colour her cheeks.

“Don’t ask.”

 

**4\. Yoga**

It’s not that he doesn't know what yoga is. He’s discovered that with the Internet, it’s very hard to be unfamiliar with popular fads, but Steve can’t honestly say he’s ever been particularly interested in taking it up. It’s Bruce’s thing – which, if you believe everything you read on the Internet, is about as surprising as Natasha’s love of vodka – and it’s not like Steve really needs more activity, nor the apparently calming influence that yoga exerts.

But one ridiculously early spring morning, Steve’s on his morning run through the paths of the Mall when he recognizes a woman stretching in the shade.

“Lieutenant Hill.”

Her smile is beyond amused as she watches him come to a stop, barely winded. “How far?”

“About ten,” he says with a nonchalant shrug.

“Late start?”

He laughs, real and hearty. This woman.

It doesn’t seem to matter how many times he tells himself she’s off limits, he can’t seem to convince his heart. He genuinely likes Maria, her straight forward way of handling him, the fact that he’s managed to learn when she’s lying, when she’s avoiding the truth and when she is very deliberately holds information back. And in the middle of all of that, he’s stopped asking questions. He trusts her. Almost unconditionally.

Her missions never fail.

He watches her stretch, simple ones that he tends to do, before she actually kicks off her shoes. On the grass of the Mall. It’s so incongruous to the careful woman he knows as Maria that he has to do a double take.

She rolls her eyes. “Have you ever tried doing yoga in shoes, Rogers?”

“I’ve never tried yoga,” he admits as he blinks at her bare feet. Her toes are red, he notices, a bloody, violent shade that he shouldn’t associate so much with war and strength.

She lifts her arms to the air, her whole body lengthening – and Steve’s breath _does not_ catch because he has will power and control – before she relaxes on a heavy exhale. “Any particular reason?”

“It’s a little slow for my taste?”

She laughs before she stretches up again, this time bending herself in half as she exhales.

(He looks, okay? Because she is gorgeous and toned and he is a man so, there’s that. He doesn’t feel too guilty about it since she doesn’t seem bothered.)

“It’s conditioning,” she answers when she straightens again. “Strength training.”

“I have weights.”

“So do I.” She raises an eyebrow his way before bending in half again. He watches this time as she stretches out. A plank, he recognizes, taking in the length of her body. Her arms flex as she balances, her eyes closing as wisps of hair fall over her ears. He watches her breathe, the inhale and exhale before she lowers herself, slow and steady, to the bright purple mat beneath her.

“Rogers,” she says as she pushes back – he does not watch the bend of her hips because he is a _gentleman._ “Your last five miles won’t run themselves.”

He finds himself chuckling as he steps up, as he checks the grass around him. He’s not sure when he’d made the decision, but he finds himself bending in half, right hand planted six inches from her left. When she flows back into the plank position again, he follows, brings his right leg between his hands when she does, rises.

“These poses have names, right?” he asks, mirroring her when she raises her arms. “What’s this one?”

“Warrior,” she says, her face straight but amusement in her eyes. “I thought you didn’t like yoga.”

“I said I’d never tried,” he tells her, breathing carefully as he copies her bend back, his leg returning him to the plank position along side her. “Not that I didn’t like it. This one?”

Blue eyes he dreams about are full of quiet laughter. “Plank.”

“Into?”

He hears her heavy exhale. “Downward dog.”

She walks him through what he’ll later learn is a sun salutation, naming each position along the way. He admires her conditioning, the strength of her as she bends, as she twists. Her balance is all but perfect, rarely a wobble. He does what he can to knock her off, to make her laugh when his thighs start to burn. Eventually, every muscle in her body relaxes and he blinks at her as she pats the mat beside her.

She looks out over the Mall, back straight legs crossed. He’s not sure what makes him reach out, nor what spurs him to ghost his fingers down her very straight spine. He is sure he sees the tremor that hums through her body.

“Does it help?” he finds himself asking. “Yoga?”

Because he is not under any illusion that her job has moments where it isn’t stressful. He’s always thought she’s basically everywhere in SHIELD, in on every mission, aware of every single move every SHIELD agent has ever made.

She seems to consider him for a moment. “It’s easy to get lost in the job,” she reveals quietly. “This gives me… time.”

He can understand that. Intimately. “It’s not so bad,” he tells her.

She laughs a little. “No.”

“Soothing.”

“Sometimes.”

He pushes himself up, does everything he can to not picture this in a much more domestic setting, picture himself leaning down to press his mouth to hers when she cranes her neck back.

“Same time tomorrow?”

He knows that twitch, the way her mouth tilts up just a little, pleased. “Bring a mat.”

He considers what he’s going to say for maybe a beat. He’s careful on the job, yes, but impulsive in his personal life. Impulsive and maybe a bit of a daredevil. “You bring a mat, I’ll buy you coffee.”

It takes a moment, like she has to think very carefully about her answer. He can almost see her telling herself it’s just coffee and he’s just Steve. “Deal.”

His hands actually clench to keep himself from leaning down. “Briefing at ten?”

“Fury pushed it to ten thirty,” she answers as she stands, as she rolls up the mat. “Last minute trip to Miami.”

“See you at ten thirty then.”

He takes off, but when he gets to the edge of the Reflecting Pool he can’t help but look back. She’s still there, watching with the yoga mat under one arm, a gym bag slung over the other. He barely resists his grin.

 

**5\. Movies**

Maria takes it as a personal affront that the epitome of American justice, benevolence and altruism has never been introduced to the brilliance that is Julie Andrews. Steve has literally never seen her so offended, and he’s heard enemies call her names he’d been livid about when he’d looked up the definition. To those, Maria merely arches an unimpressed eyebrow.

To his lack of Julie Andrews?

“I’m sorry, who is in charge of your twenty-first century education?” she says, her voice clipped, irritated. “Sitwell and Romanov are fired.”

Steve chokes on a laugh, but her eyes are coldly serious when she looks up at him. “My suite. Tonight. Bring food.”

He is giddy when he shows up at her Georgetown brownstone. He’s been here before – he and Maria are friends now, at the very least – but he can’t seem to help himself. There’s something about a movie night with Maria, a movie marathon, if he’s Googled correctly, that just sits right in his gut.

 She’s in black yoga pants when she swings open the door, and an old Army hoodie with the sleeves shoved to her elbows. “Excellent. Is that Thai?”

“Figured it was time for a change of pace.”

“You’re not wrong. Come on in.”

He goes straight to the kitchen with the food, pulls down plates while she takes care of cutlery and glasses. It’s easy and companionable in ways Steve’s come to both adore and appreciate and his artist’s mind can’t help but picture something longer, more domestic, filled with the way he wants to tug her into his side and press a kiss to her temple, the way he wants to dart in and press his mouth to her cheek.

“Steve?”

That doesn’t help, the informality and comfort she’s only ever willing to display behind closed doors. He has to shake himself, remind himself that this is Maria and they are friends. They both work too hard, are way too dedicated, to try and pursue something else.

(And why would she want him? Seventy plus years of baggage has left him a little messed up, not to mention, you know, the fact that he puts himself in danger every third day. It’s his job, sure, but he also knows she understands it’s his calling too. Maybe an atonement for suriving – that’s what his shrink says – but she will never question it.

Sometimes he wonders what she’s atoning for.)

“Hey.”

He can’t stop the grin from spreading across his face when she hip checks him, when she looks up at him.

“Still with me? Julie Andrews is serious business. We can put _Die Hard_ on again if you’re not up for it.”

He knows she sees the way he laughs at her, just a little. But he shakes his head. “Sorry. I’m good.”

“You’d better be. Because there are rules.”

“Lieutenant, with you there are always rules.”

She sends him a sharp look and okay, he doesn’t mean it that way. There are always rules, but he is not, _he is really not_ , trying to broach the subject of their friendship dancing along the line of being something different.

So he just offers her an entirely innocent smile and says, “Lay ‘em on me.”

Maria watches him for a moment, then turns on her heel, full glasses of water and cutlery in her hands. He follows with the plates.

“There will be four, count them, four movies we’re watching tonight. We’ll knock out the _Princess Diaries_ first because they’re not my favourites. Julie Andrews playing a queen is an amazing thing, but they’re a little romcom for me.”

He nods, sees the four cases spread out in front of him as she settles the glasses, forks and spoons on the coffee table. “ _Mary Poppins_?”

She hums, darting around to the DVD player. “It’s a classic. Spoon full of sugar?”

“Uh.” He thinks, closes his eyes. “The nurse across the hall from me says that.”

Maria stiffens. His heart rate picks up because no. Maria Hill is not the jealous type.

(And he won’t get his hopes up.)

“Isn’t it a kid’s movie?”

Maria blows out a breath. “See, that’s the kind of attitude that’s going to get you a one-way ticket to _Twilight_.”

He shivers. “You don’t even like that movie.”

“ _Mary Poppins_ is not a ‘kids movie’, Rogers. And even if it was, she won an Oscar for that role. Do not judge. Rule number two.”

He picks up _The Sound of Music,_ flips the case over. “And three?”

“If you sing _anything_ you hear in that movie outside of this room, I will leave you in Africa for six months.”

He merely raises an eyebrow as she comes back around to the couch and settles right next to him, close enough that he can feel her there. She makes it through _Princess Diaries_ with snarking commentary, even it’s rather hilarious sequel. By _Mary Poppins_ though, she’s fading, so he’s not surprised when she makes him change the DVD.

He is, however, terribly upset that she’s asleep by the time the nuns start asking how to solve a problem like Maria, even if she is curled tight against his side.

 

**+1. Women**

Everything has literally just blown up, dust still drifting through the air, still settling. Maria’s still breathing harshly, inhaling the rough particles, trying to clear her throat and blink the destruction out of her eyes.

“Damn,” she murmurs. “I was hoping this would be cleaner.”

She hears a choked up laugh seconds before she feels the strength of his hand on her neck, the momentum as he pulls her into his body and seals his mouth over hers. It doesn’t matter that she saw this coming, that this has been a long time coming, that she’d known ages ago that she was no longer teaching him about his new time but actually enjoying his company, his kiss still takes her by surprise.

Turns out, he’s not done yet.

He knows what he’s doing, knows how to explore, how to take, and the palm at her neck holds her still for his assault. Not that she’s planning on going anywhere. On the other hand, she turns into him, opens beneath him, flares with relief and exhaustion and the surprising knowledge that she’s done fighting, herself and him. Her hand, the one not still gripping her gun, slips into the loops of his belt, pulls him closer against her.

He’s breathing is harsh when he lets her go, this time less from the exertion and more from the dark heat she can see in those startling blues. “God you are magnificent.”

She laughs. Loud and bright, letting go of him to check the barrel and safety of her gun, tucking it neatly back in it’s holster. It does nothing to dim the heat in his gaze and he makes a desperate sound as he reaches for her again. She goes willingly, lets him tuck her snugly against his body, feels the vibration of the shield as he passes it behind her back to secure it to his. He splays a hand across the bottom of her spine, heat and strength.

Eventually, their kiss slows, maybe from the shouts of team members that are emerging with prisoners from the wreckage, maybe because despite the glorious feel of him this is not the time, nor the place.

“Looks like not all things in this time escapes your grasp.”

He shoots her a sheepish look. “It’s a little out of order-“

“Or not,” she interrupts, cocking her head to the side. “Are you about to apologize?”

Honestly, she might kill him if he does. Not because she’s offended at the idea that he’s sorry for kissing her. She’s not stupid, she’s not blind and God, that’s not Steve’s style, but she can wholeheartedly believe he’d be apologizing for being so forward.

Yeah, she doesn’t mind it when he’s forward.

“No,” he finally decides. “But I should probably take you out on a date first.”

She shrugs, looks around. “We’re out, together, doing an activity we both love. I think this counts.”

“It’s a mission,” he says amusement all over his face.

She shrugs. “And?”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “Hella’va story. Our first date was a mission on a remote island off the Portuguese coast.”

“Oh Steve,” she says. “Our first date was the day I introduced you to farmer’s markets. At least if you ask Pepper.”

He gapes at her. “I like your mission story better. More us.”

“I thought so too.”


	8. Picking Glass out of Maria's Foot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't think about it at the time because he is so, so mad at Tony, but after things settle he remembers Maria's bare feet and the shattered glass littering the floor.

It’s not that he doesn’t notice. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. The glass on the floor and even the way Nat’s ginger and careful… So when he sees Maria picking glass out of her foot the only thing that stops him from reaching for her and doing it himself is that he is very,  _very_  angry at Tony. So it isn’t until they’ve all gone their separate ways that he takes the opportunity to hunt her down.

“Hey,” she greets, pulling open the door to her Avengers Tower suite. Steve can see the patches of blood along the hardwood. 

“You probably shouldn’t be walking around. Aren’t you just shoving the glass deeper?” 

She shrugs, but her nonchalance is utterly ruined by her wince. She holds a hand up before he can so much as twitch in her direction. “I will smack you.”

He huffs but settles for following her limping form back to the bathroom. Her sink is littered with tiny, bloody shards of glass. God, he hates when Maria’s humanity is so blatantly on display. 

(Which, he would like to point out, is no reflection on her capabilities. He hadn’t thought much about her during their battle with the Iron Legion. He’s never doubted Maria can take care of herself. But sometimes he forgets that any mission could be their last.

But more than that, he’s seen Maria do some incredible things. It’s easy to forget that she is entirely human, with no super serum or suit of armour to protect her from the rougher missions. Or insane AI’s.)

She sits on the toilet and reaches for the tweezers, but Steve beats her to them as he lifts her left foot into his lap. 

“Not because you can’t,” he begins before she can get indignant. “But because it’s easier for me.”

“I was handling it just fine,” 

Steve bits the inside of his cheek. Maria isn’t the type to pout, but he’s sure she would be otherwise. “You were.”

Not that he’ll argue. A disgruntled Maria is an alive Maria and she can be as disgruntled as she’d like because she is  _alive_. 

He can’t stop himself from running his thumb over the arch of her foot, takes the tweezers to get pieces closer to her toes. He hears her suck in air through her teeth. “Sorry.”

“S’fine,” she says, blowing out a breath. “I’ve had worse.”

“You were terrifying.”

Maria laughs a little. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should,” he says all of the emotion welling up in him now, to see her alive and safe. With only a window’s worth of glass in the soles of her feet. The tweezers drop from his hands as he falls to the floor between her knees. “Maria.”

He hears her breath catch, her eyes widen. They’ve been dancing around this, he knows, all of the missions, the time together, evenings in the common areas… But he’s never been this close to her death, never felt so responsible. He rests his hands tentatively on her knees, slides them up her thighs until he hits the end of her dress. 

“Steve.”

But he’s already pushing up on his knees, desperate, his hand threading through her hair to hold her head still. She lets him kiss her, even kisses him back, her hand on his cheek. There comes a natural end to the kiss, their first kiss, and her eyes are so deep when he forces his open again. 

“Not now,” she breathes. “Steve-”

“I know what I want.”

“I know you do.” He likes the trust that shows, the little twitch of her lips. “But this is the worst timing ever.”

He laughs a little, his head drops. Her hand runs through his hair and he cannot stop the shiver that races through him. 

“There’s a lot you have to do, you and the team. We have jobs to do here.”

“People to save.”

“A world to save.”

He looks up at her. He takes a breath, then a second. “You matter, Maria.”

And maybe it’s stupid because they don’t know what they’re up against, they don’t know what they’re going to be facing and they don’t know if they will come out alive. But Steve is done with letting people pass through his life without also letting them know how much they matter. Not anymore. 

“When all of this is done, we’ll… Catch up.”

“Reevaluate.” 

“That too.” 

He smiles, slides his hands down to her knees again. “Okay. Okay. After we defeat Ultron. In the meantime…”

This time, Maria doesn’t protest at all when he picks up her foot.


	9. "That's what I've been trying to tell you!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has no problem taking credit for knocking some sense into Steve.

Look, Sam’ll take full credit for it, okay? There isn’t a piece of him that isn’t willing to sit up and tell this story with him playing the role of epic and omniscient matchmaker. 

Even if Steve and Maria tell a different story. 

See, Sam learns early that Steve will not turn down a dare. Well, Steve won’t turn down a challenge, a dare, an off-hand comment that says he maybe kind of sort of can’t do something. Anything that includes the phrase “I don’t think” seems to do it. 

And one day, he uses that knowledge for (evil) good. 

Specifically, the good that will become Steve’s life if he just got off his ass and asked Lieutenant Hill out on a date. A real date. Not the ridiculous things neither Steve nor Maria will actually call a date.

“You know you and Hill are practically dating, right?”

Steve does a spit-take before annoyance blossoms over his features. “Maria and I are friends. We work together in a difficult industry. Why is everyone set on the fact that we’re dating?”

“Uh, ‘cause you are.”

Steve gives him an irritated look. “Men and women can be friends.”

“Not you two. You can’t seriously tell me you’re blind to the tension.”

“There is no tension! We’re friends.”

“Sexual tension.”

It’s too bad Steve’s terrible at lying, Sam thinks. Like, the worst he’s ever seen. The way Steve goes rigid says all Sam needs to know. 

The thing is, Sam knows Steve isn’t near as innocent as the great Captain America would like the world to believe. But more than that, Sam has a set of eyes. Cups of coffee, take-out lunches, unwavering defence of each other and their mission reports and quiet conversations in dark corners. Or, you know. Maria in a stunning formal gown on the arm of Captain Steve Rogers at Pepper’s MassGeneral Children’s Hospital fundraising gala. 

“Sam.”

Sam knows that tone. Half Captain America, half ‘I swear I’m going to injure you’. 

“Really? You’re going to try and tell me I’m wrong?” Sam props his hands on his hips. “When you heard about that Andy Warhol exhibit at the MoMA, who is the first person you thought to take with you?”

“No one else likes his work.”

Sam tactfully refrains from answering with Natasha’s name. “And the Shakespeare festival in Central Park?”

“She said she loves outdoor performances more.”

“How about the fact that you remember something like that? No, better, that she  _told_  you something like that?”

“We’ve worked together a long time. We’re  _friends_.”

“Dude. There is literally no definition of friends that has a man and a woman spending that much time together outside of work.”

“Sam, we are not dating! We are two single people, who have things in common and enjoy spending time together. Yes, okay, we go to the museum together, and she suffered through the opera with me, but we’re equally as happy talking over coffee on a patio or going for a ride outside the city and-”

It washes over Steve in a split second that has triumph rising in Sam before he can even inhale properly.

“Oh my God, we’re dating.”

And Sam will let the language go - and the utter _wonderful_  mocking fodder he’s just been presented - for a bigger prize. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

Steve’s eyes are so panicked when he faces Sam that Sam almost feels a little sorry for the national icon. Almost. 

“What do I do?” 

“You’re hopeless,” Sam sighs as he drops his head to the table. 


	10. Waiting at the new Avenger's facility for a quinjet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AOU SPOILERS
> 
> Four months after she sees him off in a quinjet, he comes home, whole and maybe a little bruised, with none other than the Winter Soldier in tow. That's okay though, she has a surprise of her own.

The landing pad is windy and guilty of blowing her hair in her face. Maria doesn’t much care as she waits patiently, flicking through the mission brief on her tablet. She doesn’t even look up as the swish of the doors notifies her of new arrivals. 

“Quinjet’s two minutes out.”

His scent hits her first, maybe on the breeze, but when she looks up he’s so very close, eyes so very intense. The sound of the approaching quinjet starts to vibrate in her ears as his hand reaches out, ghosts down her arm.

“PDA,” she murmurs, though there’s no rebuke. It’s different now, the mission in front of him, her beside him. 

His gaze flicks to Natasha. “She knows.”

It still makes her squeemish, this kind of out there representation of what’s always been behind closed doors. But he’d had enough, and given how close she knows they’d come to losing him (and the utterly explosive argument that had followed in the aftermath), their opinion had changed. 

It’s just hard to get used to. 

She inhales a shaky breath as the quinjet touches down, finds herself turning to grip the shoulder strap that secured his shield to his back. 

“Be safe.”

He releases a choked, desperate sound, leans down to take her mouth in a punishing, beautiful kiss. 

“I’ll be home soon.”

Then he’s jogging up the ramp of the quinjet, smooth and confident as his Captain America persona takes hold. Maria doesn’t wave as the ramp closes, as the quinjet takes off. Instead, she tucks her tablet under her arm and presses her palm to her stomach. 

When he comes back, when he’s not distracted by Hydra and Barnes and this damn cryo chamber he and Nat are about to leave in tiny dust particles, she’ll tell him miracles do happen. 

(It takes him four months and she can’t hide it when he comes back, worn and tired, Barnes lagging behind half supported by Natasha. He does a double take when he sees her, his eyes going dark, possessive. 

“Something you need to tell me?”

She lets herself loop her arms around his neck, take his mouth in a kiss reminiscent of the one he’d laid on her before he left, plunders and takes what she’s been missing for months. 

“Barnes has to report to psych first thing in the morning. And you need to say a proper hello.”

Never, as long as she lives, will she forget the way he drops to his knees right then and there, wraps his palms around her bump and whispers. “Hello, Peanut.”)


	11. Maria and Steve share a bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AOU SPOILERS
> 
> She's not supposed to even be at Barton's farm, not really. So when Laura suggest they have to share a bed, Maria offers to share with Steve. It's the least she can do for infringing on their much-needed recovery time.

Technically, Maria isn’t supposed to go with them. It’s not safe, it’s not strategically a good idea and it certainly won’t boost team morale.

She goes anyway.

She’s been to Clint’s farm a handful of times, long before she was the Deputy Director, back when she was just Hill, a handler that swapped off with Phil from time to time. She knows Laura and the kids call her Auntie Maria, the same way Auntie Nat is a thing - and yes, for the record, it still weirds her out.

It doesn’t mean she doesn’t flinch when Laura mentions they’re going to have to share rooms.

Bruce and Natasha have already offered - and that’s something that will require consideration when she can get her head on straight and not immediately after the Hulk did the equivalent of destroying an entire city - and as she looks between Steve and Tony she knows there’s a storm brewing there.

And that’s why she offers.

“I’ll take the floor,” she tells him quietly, closing the door behind them. It puts them in close quarters - very close quarters - and Maria resolutely ignores the pounding of her heart. 

(She almost lost him today, she knows. She almost lost all of them, but she’s starting to think that maybe her rather adept denial about how much it would hurt to lose Steve is starting to fray around the edges. She’s terrified, she’s unsure and she’s giddy. She’s not sure how she feels about the last one.)

“I’ve slept on worse. Take the bed, Maria.”

She sighs, faces him head on. “You just had your head scrambled,” she says. “She didn’t lay a hand on me. Take the bed, Steve. Get some rest.”

And then he actually goes and says it, the thing that is the most logical and most terrifying.

“We can share.”

It’s how Maria ends up on her back, staring up at the ceiling and listening to Steve decidedly not sleeping beside her. Eventually she sighs and turns on her side, fixing her gaze on his jaw.

“What happened?” 

He doesn’t ask what she means. They both know he doesn’t have to. If they’re nothing else, they are friends, and they understand each other.

(And maybe that’s why she’s never pushed it, why she wouldn’t push him, wouldn’t push herself. Maybe it’s why she’s never consider  _them_  outside of the darkest hours of night when she’s battling off nightmares by playing an insomniac.)

“She got to me.”

She swallows hard and thick, breathes in deep before she reaches out and rests her hand on his bicep. He flinches, tenses and she automatically moves to withdraw.

“No.”

Her breath hitches because he sounds breathless, pained, determined. Her hand freezes, just barely above his arm. Movement catches her eye, his other hand, the weight of it pressing hers down again, curving her fingers around his bicep.

She lets out a shaky breath. “Steve.”

He swallows. “I can’t stop thinking of what I’ve lost.”

Like she doesn’t know that. Hydra hadn’t been the only ones she’d been calling out when she’d told him they weren’t at war. Not that it takes a genius to see Captain America isn’t the best when it comes to change.

“What if I never belong here?”

She groans. Actually groans like she’s been stabbed. She doesn’t know what it says when he turns to look at her, wounded puppy in his eyes but his hand still heavy on hers.

“Sometimes you are stupid.”

He gives her a rather epic impersonation of a wounded puppy, but Maria’s done coddling him.

“Steve. You know you’re the only person who doesn’t think you have a place here, right?” 

He blinks at her.

“And I get it, kind of. You woke up in a strange time where all of your friends that weren’t dead were pushing ninety years old, your war was gone, your enemies, you had no purpose. But dammit Steve, that’s not what you have now. You have friends, you have a team, you have people who care about you as Steve, not as Captain America and where I’m sitting, you’re throwing it all away because  _you_  think you don’t belong. When there isn’t a person on this team that would ever cop to wanting you anywhere else.

“And if this is about Carter…” She blows out a breath. “I didn’t know her well. She was on her way out when she sponsored me in but there is no way a woman who worked that hard to preserve your legacy in an entire organization would ever want to see you second guessing your place in it.”

His eyes are wide. It’s the most passionate she’s ever been in front of him, the most adamant, but even if Maria doesn’t believe in superheroes, doesn’t believe they should require them or rely on the altruistic good will of a bunch of people that could destroy the world as fast as they could save it, she means every damn word.

He belongs here. Fighting alongside Natasha, helping Tony see sense when Pepper’s not around, explaining pop culture to Thor before turning around and pranking the hell out of him, hell, even encouraging Bruce to poke his head out of his shell every now and again. It drives her absolutely insane - and hurts her in ways she will never admit to, even under torture - that he cannot see what he does here. That he’s needed here.

“I, uh, didn’t know you felt that way.”

She rolls her eyes. Not the reaction she should have, maybe, but the only one she feels makes sense.

“Would you? Want me somewhere else?”

Any other man and she’s shrug the comment off, throw one back about fishing for complements and pulling on her trusty Ice Queen Cape. Maybe something in his face makes her pause, something intense in his eyes, the heat of his palm on her knuckles. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

“No,” she says, a low murmur filled with more meaning than she’d like. 

She’ll never know if her words had any effect, not really. He goes into battle the next day and she goes off with Fury to suit up and save the day. But when they’re at the new facility and he tracks her down, both of them worn and exhausted, his mouth tilts up into a little smile.

“I feel like Chinese and Cary Grant.”

(Turns out, she doesn’t see much of the movie, and a lot of the Chinese food goes cold, but she leaves with the taste of Steve in her mouth and really, she can’t complain.

She doesn’t mind being a part of ‘home’.)


	12. Wanda and Nat team up as unnecessary matchmakers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AOU SPOILERS
> 
> Wanda tries to play matchmaker. Vision feels like it’s a terrible idea. Nothing goes to plan.

Nat is not eavesdropping. She’s not eavesdropping because that’s not what she does. She is an Avenger and does not spy on or eavesdrop on her fellow teammates.

She just… overhears it is all. Overhears and investigates because she hears Steve’s name closely followed by Maria’s and that is more than intriguing.

“Wanda, no.”

“Why not?” Wanda asks, her shrug utterly uncaring. Vision sits a cushion away, looking more than a little wary. “The tension is too thick to work. It will all settle once they have admitted their feelings.”

“Be that as it may, this is still a terrible idea.”

Nat can’t help the Cheshire grin that creeps over her face for a moment before she schools her features and steps into the lounge. “What’s a terrible idea?”

Neither new Avenger so much as blinks (she tries very hard not to be upset about it because  _God_  she is not losing her touch, okay?) but Nat has to admire the smirk that spreads across Wanda’s face. Actually, there are a lot of things Nat admires about the Scarlett Witch.

“Matchmaking.”

Oh. Oh yes.

“Oh?”

Wanda hums a little and while it makes Nat’s hair stand on end, the Widow knows this is not a bad thing. This is an ally. She likes matchmaking allies. Especially when the target is Steve.

(She absolutely adores making Captain America blush. It’s an ongoing competition she has with herself, a game she plays when she’s bored. She’s glad Steve’s mostly a good sport about it.)

“Lieutenant Hill. She is single, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And the Captain?”

“Yes.”

Wanda shrugs, just a little, but Nat’s not fooled. Neither is Vision, who is watching the two of them with the closest thing to concern written on his face.

“Maybe they should be single together?” 

Vision sighs.

* * *

“Wanda should be able to handle it,” Steve says, watching the screen over Maria’s shoulder. “We can send Rhodey if you’re nervous.”

“It’s not nerves,” Maria retorts, a little sharp, a little defensive. It makes Steve grin. Riling Maria is one of his favourite past times, in more ways than one. “Solo missions are always different.”

“I’m aware, Lieutenant.”

He gets an eyeroll for that one.

“Excuse me, Captain? Lieutenant?”

“Vision,” Maria acknowledges, all teasing gone from her voice. She’s still unsure of the new man in their mix, the neutrality of him. Steve knows that she will always question his loyalty merely because he is not a quantifiable entity. Maria’s not a fan of the unknown. 

“I feel it is my duty to warn you.”

Both of them straighten, his hand falling to her shoulder. Vision blinks for a moment and Steve thinks there’s approval in the generally impassive face.

“I’m afraid Wanda and Miss Romanoff have formed an alliance.”

Steve groans, because that cannot be good in so very, very many ways. “Target?”

“The two of you, I believe.”

He exchanges a look with Maria, confusion there.

“I do believe Wanda spoke of matchmaking.”

Oh. Oh there’s the laughter. It bubbles up in him as he looks down at Maria, at the sparkle in her eyes. It takes a moment for Steve to get a handle on himself, but when he looks up, Vision’s head is cocked to the side, watching.

“I believe their efforts will be superfluous.”

Maria glances up at Steve, then over at Vision. “Yes.”

“But,” Steve adds, because he cannot help himself. “Let’s not ruin their fun.”

Vision outright grins.


	13. Steve & Thor's hammer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AOU SPOILERS
> 
> Steve's not paying attention. So when Maria's first exclamation is "I knew it!" he is justifiably confused.

Honestly, he’s not even thinking about it at the time. Mjolnir is in his way, that’s all. At the time, he doesn’t even realize it’s the hammer until he’s already picked it up to shift it somewhere else. Somewhere out of the way.

He just barely hears the gasp, turns to find Maria - in her old SHIELD uniform, and even he has to admit it suits her - braced in the doorway. “I saw that.”

His brows knit together. “Sorry?”

“I saw that,” she says again, triumphant and breathless, and he does not see this Maria often enough. 

(He only sees this Maria in the privacy of her own bedroom, moonlight in her hair just before his body lights up beneath her.)

“That was Thor’s hammer.”

He spins in surprise and sure enough, the object he’d just set down is Mjolinir. “What?”

Maria steps into the room then, keeps moving until she’s right at his side. The heat of her is there, tingling at the back of his consciousness (he is always aware of her, it seems), as they both stare at Thor’s weapon of choice.

“I knew you were faking.”

Steve blinks. It takes him a minute before he remembers Tony’s party, their celebration of a successful mission. Just before everything went all to hell. “I wasn’t. Not then.”

It’s not a question of belief, not really. Maria’s always on him about how damn honest he is, how it is basically impossible for him to do anything less than tell the truth.

“What changed?” 

“Home.” 

He doesn’t have to look to see her eyebrow arch, but he does find himself dropping the broom slightly to reach for her hand, groping a little until he catches hold. Maria squeezes, encouraging.

“What Wanda showed me, the fear of it… I’m terrified I will always be a man out of time.”

Maria doesn’t say anything, doesn’t respond, but she also doesn’t have to. It’s a conversation they’ve had time and time again.

“But I’m not,” Steve says, finally turns to look at her. Her breath catches and he thinks it’s because of his face, the serenity, the knowledge. The certainty.

“This is my home, With Nat and Tony, Thor and Wanda. I have a purpose here with the Avengers, with SHIELD. I have… whatever this is.”

He’s glad she laughs. They’ve both been wary about labelling what they’re doing, doing anything less than going with the flow. It’s the pressure, the eyes, the prying.

Still, he grins at her and squeezes her hand. ”I’m home.”


	14. Come over here and make me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony likes nothing better than picking on his teammates when he's bored. And Tony is very, very bored.

He should have known better. He beyond should have known better. He, of all people, should be intimately familiar with the little shit gene that tends to rear it’s ugly head when Tony’s bored. 

And Tony is beyond bored.

“Come on, Cap. You can’t cling to a ghost forever.”

It’s really his endless wells of patience that keeps him from actually strangling the other man. That, and years of practice with Natasha saying a politer version of the same thing. 

Plus, it’s not like the team is unfamiliar with his single status. He’s had just about every member harass him about it in one way or another. Anything from gentle questions to well-meaning suggestions of ‘good people’, or ‘fun nights out’. 

The core of it is this: it’s not that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life with someone, and it has nothing to do with Peggy Carter. Not anymore, anyway. The core of it is that the woman he wants, wants nothing to do with him. Romantically, at least. 

They are friends. Colleagues. Excellent partners in and out of the field. But Maria Hill really isn’t the dating type and he isn’t as naive as people make him out to be. He understands what it could mean to her, to her career and her reputation, should she choose to pursue something romantic with him. 

Well, and it’s not like he’s necessarily made his intentions clear. He doesn’t tend to go into battles he has no intention of winning. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately, really, for drama’s sake) Tony doesn’t see it that way. Neither does Natasha, nor Wanda, who have both perked up with Tony’s well-meaning, if poorly worded sentiment. 

“Tony, tell me when I’m going to have time?” Steve says, rubbing a hand over his forehead as he leans back on the couch. “When I’m not training, I’m on missions. When I’m not on missions, I’m trying to find Bucky. When I’m not trying to find Bucky I’ve been medically mandated to take a break.”

“Exactly! On those breaks!”

“By medically mandated I mean bedrest, Tony.”

“It can’t hurt to get out every once in a while,” Natasha pipes up, absently cleaning a small pistol. 

He shoots her a look because she is absolutely not helping. She merely shrugs. He’ll get her back. He’s not sure when, and not wholly sure how, but he will. 

“See? Even the Russian assassin thinks you should get laid!”

“Leave him alone, Stark.”

Steve’s never been happier to see Maria in his life. He’s sure of that. Not even that time off the coast of Haiti when she saved him from going for another ill-timed swim. 

Except neither of them had anticipated Tony turning on her. 

“Ah ha! Lieutenant Hill. How nice of you to come to the Captain’s defence.” 

Maria sighs. “Rogers doesn’t need my defence. You, on the other hand.”

“Nah, he’s not going to hit me, are you Cap?”

“Oh my God, Tony. Shut up.”

And it’s the worst thing he could have said, both because it’s harsher language than the team assumes he uses and because it’s a front and centre surrender flag, a bright red notification that Tony’s finally starting to crack through Steve’s patience. 

“Make me.”

The challenge, the dare in Tony’s voice, makes Steve sit up straighter. He will never be sure what exactly makes him do it, what kind of courage he manages to dig up just to prove Tony wrong, but he’s on his feet a moment later, in front of Maria in a few quick steps. 

“God, don’t slap me,” he finds himself whispering before he cups Maria’s neck and slants his mouth over hers. 

He’s not sure what the team’s reaction is. Has utterly no idea, in fact, because the moment his mouth meets hers, blood roars in his ears and the tension leaks out of his frame. There’s nothing for a moment, no response, nothing, but when his hand tightens on the nape of her neck he feels the tension leak out of her too. 

And she  _responds_. 

The silence is deafening when they pull away, as she blinks open cloudy blue eyes. He watches her lick her lips, then swallow. 

“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to take me to dinner first, Cap.”

“Seven?” 

Her head tilts to the side. “Six. I have a briefing at eight on the situation in Turkey.”

“Excellent.”

“In the meantime, we’re hearing rumours of another Hydra base in Montana…”


	15. Wait a minute, are you jealous?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three weeks without her and he's feeling a little greedy. A lot greedy. Whatever.

He is not jealous. He’s just not. He is the human embodiment of American hope, faith and benevolence, and he does not get jealous. Especially of a shaggy mutt they call Spot. 

But he’s been away on a mission. Three weeks without her and okay, he’s feeling a little greedy. A lot greedy. Whatever. The point is, as much as he loves the way she’s curled against his side, completely zoned out over CNN, his eyes are glued to the palm absently stroking over Spot’s head. 

He sighs and shifts, catches her attention though he doesn’t mean to. She looks up, then follows his gaze to her hand. He feels the embarrassed blush climb his face, even as he feels her hand curl around his neck. 

He is not jealous. 

Still, there’s laughter in her eyes and she presses on his neck, brings his mouth down to hers. 

“Let’s go to bed.”

And no, he doesn’t feel better when she closes the bedroom door behind them, Spot still drowsing on the couch. Because he is not jealous. 

Much. 


	16. I thought you were dead

It’s Bucky that finds him, in a shithole of a prison, half starved and disgusting. It’s Bucky that drags him across too much terrain until his best friend can shove him up the ramp of a quinjet and strap him in, break off tiny chunks of bread so Captain America doesn’t hurl on the floor trying to stuff his face. 

It’s like old times. 

(Everything had been going so well before that. Bucky’s recovery and his relationship with Natasha, Steve’s more-than-blossoming relationship with Maria…. And then he’d been tasked with a mission in Southeast Asia and, well, that had been months ago.)

Tasha’s on the platform when they land, slipping under his other shoulder to keep him steady as she and Bucky frogmarch him into Avengers Tower. If he’s honest, Steve’s grateful they don’t run into anyone on the way down to his floor. He just wants to sleep. For a month. 

He’s out before he hits the mattress, dirty and grimy and he’s going to have to change the sheets, but really. He wakes up in the same position too, though he knows something’s off the moment he opens his eyes. 

“Relax.”

Maria. Another illusion. Like being rescued. Except as he moves to stretch he feels better than he has in months. Stronger. 

“Steve?” 

His eyes take in the room slowly, steadily. “Where am I?”

“New York,” Maria says carefully, still sitting straight and still on the edge of the bed. “What do you remember?”

“Bucky. Tasha?”

“Yes.”

His body sags against the bed in relief. Not a dream. Not a hallucination. Then his nose wrinkles. “What’s that smell?”

“Months of being held hostage in humid Southeast Asia,” she answers without hesitation. He feels more than sees her hand reach for him, the shift of her weight against the mattress. She doesn’t touch him though, not really. He can feel the heat of her hand next to his, but that’s as far as she’s willing to go. If the smell is any indication, he’s not sure he blames her. 

“I thought you were dead.”

He cracks an eye open then, takes in the way her hair hangs in front of her face, the way she’s turned away from him. He’s not sure he’s ever seen Maria look this vulnerable. Not since they took down the Triskelion. “Hey.”

She shakes her head and he watches her pull herself together, watches her spine straighten, her back tense. “Come on. Let’s get you in the shower.”

It takes some effort to push himself up and he’s stumbled half way to the en suite before he realizes she isn’t following. “Coming?” 

She nods. “Give me a minute.”

True to her word, she steps into the bathroom a moment later, barefoot and jacket-less. They strip him together, leave his nasty clothes on the floor - “I’ll call haz-mat,” she jokes, even if her smile isn’t quite as broad as he’d like - and he climbs into the shower. The hot water is a relief on his body, his muscles, every part of him. 

It takes her another moment to join him, naked as he is now. He responds to her, of course, because it’s naked Maria and he likes the look of naked Maria, but his body is exhausted. So exhausted. She hums as she reaches for him, as he realizes she’s already covered her hands in soapy lather. He relaxes under the touch of her hands, the press and release as she massages and cleans. It’s new, he thinks, but he’s not stupid enough to call her out on it. 

Yet. 

She makes three passes over his body with the soap, has him sit on the seat that is, of course, installed in the luxurious shower so she can wash his hair. Lather, rinse, repeat takes on a whole new meaning as he watches the brown suds swirl down the drain. 

They’re silent through it all, merely their breath and the sound of the water to accompany the gentle way she cleans him. There are no wounds - minus the pin marks where they’d drawn his blood, over and over again - but he still feels like she’s double checking as her hands slip over his skin. Finally, his rise to her hips, pull her in. Some of the tension flows out of her body as he presses his forehead to her abdomen. 

“Couldn’t die,” he murmurs into her skin, catalogues the shiver, but barely has the mental power to do anything about it. “Not when you didn’t know.”

He’s said similar things before, about how much he likes her, needs her, enjoys her. He’d had the l-word poised on the edge of his tongue for weeks before his mission, an emotion so close to the surface that he’d almost told her the night before he’d left. She hadn’t let him. 

Her body shakes, a shudder that is not at all pleasant. He looks up at her, her eyes so deep, so blue, her fingertips on the corners of his eyes, his temples, his jaw and chin. “I thought you were dead.”

He tugs her down, pushes and pulls until she’s straddling his lap, pressed against him as close as possible. Then he kisses her, slow and thorough and deep. She responds, doesn’t push it, just luxuriates in it. It’s everything she’s never been with him, patient and slow and methodical. A slow burn rather than the usual hot flare.

“Steve.”

He’s panting as he presses his forehead against hers, forces his eyes open. God her face. Fragile and beautiful and…

“I love you,” he says. Listens to the shuddering breath she releases. “I love you.” 

She doesn’t say it back. Can’t, he knows. But he also knows that she does, it’s all there in her eyes, her face, the way she touches him and moves against him. They make love for the first time that night, slow and exploratory and everything he’d always known loving Maria would be. 

And just as they’re drifting off, he feels her fingers brush across his chest. 

“I’m really, really, really, really glad you’re not dead.”

He chuckles, kisses her hair. “I love you, too.”


	17. Looks like we'll be trapped for a while

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is really not the place to have this discussion, but they are trapped and it is the elephant in the room, so it kind of makes sense.

Steve looks up at Maria’s sigh as she slides down the wall beside him. 

“Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while.”

Yeah, he’d figured as much. He echoes her sigh as his head tilts back, his eyes falling closed. Thankfully, neither of them are injured, just sore and tired. It’s been a long mission, longer because there’s an elephant in the room with them that they are both resolutely avoiding. 

A kiss-shaped elephant.

They’d both enjoyed it, that’s not today’s question. It’s what to do about it that’s been echoing around in his head for a week. He could chalk it up to the night, Sam had told him (after the gleeful exuberance that had followed Steve’s confession), a beautiful woman, the New York skyline, the perfect moment. 

Or. 

Or he could just dredge up the courage to tell Maria that he’d like to do it again. Soon. As soon as she’ll let him. 

He likes Maria. She’s genuine, smart, straight to the point, a number of utterly wonderful things and he enjoys spending time with her. More than he probably should given their respective careers and the number of time either of them is generally in danger. How much he’d liked their kiss? Well, that had taken him a little bit more by surprise. 

“We should probably talk about it,” he murmurs, head still back, eyes still closed. He feels her shift next to him. “The kiss, I mean.”

She huffs. “Now? We’re trapped in a cave because the damn mountain is _crawling_  with Hydra agents and you want to talk about it now?”

“May as well,” he answers neutrally. “Like you said, we’re going to be trapped awhile.” 

He feels her shift next to him. “What is there to talk about? We kissed.”

“Is that all,” he murmurs and he knows he sounds not only mocking, but bitter. 

The sound she releases is just a little bit angry. “What do you want me to say, Steve?” 

His eyes fly open as he turns, as he catches her gaze and holds it. If he’s learned anything in his growing… whatever with Maria Hill, it’s that her tell is always in her eyes. And Steve knows what he’s looking for. 

He finds it, lurking just in the corner. Wariness and anxiousness, a kind of strange and twisted excitement that tells him she wouldn’t stop him if he kissed her again, but that no matter what, she’s fighting the fact that she wants it too. 

(He gets it, okay? There’s a lot of gaps between them, professionally, emotionally, mentally, and that’s only scratching the surface. The thing is, Steve’s never been good with people who think like him. He thinks of Peggy, of Bucky, of Maria and God, if there were ever a poster child for ‘type’, he’d be a frontrunner for sure.

He’s also never really been known for taking the ‘safe’ option.) 

So he waits another beat, watches her pupils dilate just a bit before he says, “That you’d like to do it again.”

And she must get it, she must understand that he knows, that he sees, because her body language screams resigned. “That doesn’t make it a good idea.”

“No one said it had to be,” he shoots back, his hand finding hers on the floor of the cave. “Look, I’ll make you a deal: we get out of here, we get back to New York and you let me take you out. The whole thing, okay? Dinner, a dress, maybe a show-“

“No shows,” she counters, but it’s in this quiet murmur Steve’s never heard from her; like it’s a picture she can draw in her mind’s eye. “I hate Broadway.”

“Okay,” he says easily, follows it with a nonchalant shrug. To be honest, he doesn’t care what they do as long as he gets to do it with Maria. “Point is, we make a night of it. We give it a try.”

He feels her breath catch just as much as he hears it. “And then?”

He makes sure he has her whole attention before he says the next part. “And then I take you home and I’ll kiss you goodnight. If you want.”

“Why?”

He leans in and he knows she thinks he’s going for it. She’s braced for it, tense, but he merely rests his forehead on hers. “Because I want to,” he tells her honestly. “And I’ve spent enough time regretting the moments I’ve let pass me by.” 

She releases a shaky breath, one that shimmers around the edges. “This is a terrible idea.”

“Maybe it is,” he says, trying to hold back the hurt, the way his gut clenches with the idea that she doesn’t have the faith in him. The faith in them. “But let’s try anyway.”

He feels her bob her head, realizes a moment later it’s a nod. “Okay.”

(They do go on that date. He does kiss her at her door. She agrees to a second.

They never stop.)


	18. Captain Hill + Baseball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not Dodgers Stadium in the good old days, but he thinks he can get used to this kind of break anyway.

He’s studying battle plans and strategy in the new facility when Maria comes in and, with a flick of her wrist, turns off his tablet. 

“Come on.”

He moves without asking, even though this is a Maria who isn’t dressed for a SHIELD mission, nor for her role as COO of Stark Industries. He’s not in the habit of disregarding her orders. 

“Debrief?”

She shakes her head, ponytail bobbing as she weaves through the halls. Eventually she comes to a door that spits them out into a wide expanse of grass. She stops a few steps from the door, slipping sunglasses over her eyes. 

“When was the last time you took a break?”

He barks out a laugh. “I think we both know the answer to that question.”

She hums. “I take my reputation of world’s worst workaholic very seriously,” she says, slips past him to grab the baseball gloves and ball he hadn’t noticed. “And you’re currently giving me a run for my money.”

“So we’re taking a break?” 

“I keep hearing it’s good for you.”

He laughs, because he knows he’s given her his fair share of grief over just how much she works. He takes the glove without question, watches the wry smile quirk the corner of her mouth. 

“Now remember, I’m merely human. Go easy on me.”

He smiles and shakes his head as she jogs away. Maria, he’s learned in his time since the fall of the Triskelion, is definitely more than just her deputy director position. A dry sense of humour, a sarcastic wit and a loyalty he can’t help but admire. He’s learned that her strength, her reputation as cold and hard-hearted, comes from how careful she is, how she calculates risk and does everything in her power to make sure everyone comes home in one piece. 

Maria, he’s learned, is everywhere. But he’s also learned that there aren’t many people there for her. 

So he’s tried. He books his meetings during meal times so she eats, brings her coffee when he knows she’s going to be part of his debrief. He spends hours and hours going over strategy with her, so he knows down to the exact second how she expects each mission to go. 

He’s tried to help her relax. 

“You going to throw the ball, Rogers?” 

He chuckles to himself, weighs the ball and tosses it towards her. 

He discovers she’s got a great arm - “Seriously, Rogers? I worked for a law enforcement agency with a deep-seated sense of competition. You think we didn’t have baseball games?” - and that she has a surprising knowledge of baseball teams - She shrugs demurely, “I keep up.” Better than he does, it turns out - and he feels the stress, the work, slipping from his shoulders with every toss. 

Eventually, he sees her flip her wrist, check her watch. He thinks he sees her shoulders sag. “I have to get going.” 

Still, he smiles as she approaches, as she pulls off her glove and hands it to him. “We should do it again sometime.”

He thinks the smile she presents him with is the realist one he’s seen from her in a very, very long time. “Sounds good.” She rests a hand on his arm. “Thanks Steve.”

He shouldn’t think it, he know she shouldn’t, but he can feel the way his cheeks heat, the way his eyes follow her as she walks away. He takes the baseball mitts back to his quarters, slips them into a drawer in his dresser with a smile. It’s not a stadium and the Dodgers in the good old days, it’s not even really baseball, but he thinks he could get used to playing catch with Maria Hill. 


	19. Please don't do this / Don't you dare throw that snowba- Goddammit!

“Don’t you dare throw that snowba- Goddammit, Maria!”

“Language!” she laughs as she slips away, darting between trees and using their trunks as protection. She loves the forest around Clint and Laura’s place, loves training herself in the dense woods. 

And, as she and the Avengers have discovered, it’s an amazing place for well-trained agents to have a snowball fight. 

“That was a cheap shot!” she hears him call, not that she’d expected anything less. He’s had too much time in the woods not to be able to track her movements. She’d known she was in for it the minute she showed herself. 

“All’s fair in love and war, Captain,” she calls back, taunting. He’s grown on her, Captain Steve Rogers. She’s still not set on Captain America - the idea that they need the superheroes, the powered people that make up the Avengers makes her beyond nervous - but Steve is  _good._

Too good. 

She gasps as he gets an arm around her, takes her to the snow and pins her beneath him. They’re both breathing hard, his smile triumphant and, well, attractive. Really, really attractive. 

 _Now is not the time_ , she thinks to herself, not that it’s the first time these damn feelings have made themselves known. She’s hoping the pink of her cheeks can be passed off as the cold, and if she’s lucky, he’s not paying too much attention to her face. 

Her attention diverts with the handful of snow he brandishes above her. Her eyes widen. “No,” she says. “Steve, please don’t-”

But he’s already half way through shoving the snow down her shirt, his weight and body pressing against her so she can’t do much more than squirm as the snow melts against her skin. He laughs above her, catches her wrists to pin her more securely. Still, in her struggle, she doesn’t miss the way his eyes go dark, the way his body shifts so easily with hers. 

Her breath catches as he leans down to whisper in her ear, “All’s fair in love and war, Lieutenant.”

She’s just no longer sure which one this is.


	20. I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, the best way to deal with this crush of yours is to just ask me out.”

“You know, the best way to deal with this crush of yours is to just ask me out.”

Steve jolts hard, drops the piece of charcoal. But, of course, not before it smudges it’s way half way across his page. Not that it matters - it does, it really does, because he finally thinks he’s captured the essence of Maria in this picture and shit, he is in so much trouble - because he’s already scrambling to shut the sketch book to begin with. 

“Excuse me?”

Maria plops - because that is the only logical word for the way she just drops next to him - on the couch and makes herself comfortable by curling a leg beneath her body. Easy. Casual despite her business attire. His favourite kind of Maria. 

“I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”

He feels the blush race up his neck to colour his cheeks, raises his hand to rub at his neck self-consciously. “You’re a beautiful woman. It’s hard not to notice.”

He tells himself her cheeks don’t go just a little pink because he knows she has better self control than that. (Natasha had relayed a story of Maria in the co-pilot’s seat, a comment that he knows would have pissed her off enough to shoot first and ask questions later, but her calm, controlled, taunting response.)

Her eyebrow rises. “Going to do anything about it, Cap?”

Wait. What?

What?!

“I’m sorry?”

“No pressure,” she says, leaning back against the couch. He wonders if maybe this casual look of hers isn’t quite as easy as she’s letting on. It’s her eyes, he thinks. “But it’s probably something you should think about.”

He mirrors her casual position on the couch, swallowing heavily. It’s not that Maria scares him, not really. She’s competent and capable and beautiful, but she’s not the first woman he’s encountered like that. It’s just… well… He’d feel better if he knew where this was going. Where it could go. 

He’s been in the twenty-first century long enough to understand that not every relationship is based on a mutual attraction and desire for monogamy. It’s not his preferred relationship, certainly, but he gets it. He even understands the idea of ‘scratching an itch’ and ‘getting it out of his system’. The thing is, considering the mix of things he tends to feel when Maria’s in the room, he’s not sure that’s enough for him. 

But given the type of woman Maria is (strong, independent),what her priorities are (work, her career, her professional reputation) and where her loyalties lie (with Maria herself, before anyone else), he’s not convinced it won’t be enough for her. 

“And what happens after that?”

She considers him for a minute and he’s a little surprised at how calm she looks, like she’d known the question was coming and that she would need an answer. She looks like she’s thought about it. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “You know I can’t make promises.” She cocks her head to the side, a tiny smile dancing over her mouth. “If I wanted just sex, Rogers, I would have suggested just sex.”

Dammit. He knows that. He does. He’s just… this is Maria. It’s so complicated with her, is always (and every other tense of ‘to be’) going to be complicated. 

Steve’s never been content with easy. 

“There’s a pizza place in Brooklyn. Second generation family owned. We should go.” 

She stands with a smile, surprises the hell out of him when she leans in and presses her mouth to his cheek. “We should.”

He reaches out for her on instinct, scrambling to keep her close. Because that’s just logical. “Now?”

She releases this contented little hum that he already really likes. “No. You took too long, Captain. I have a briefing with Barton in fifteen minutes.” 

He grunts, moves with the impulse and tugs on her waist, sends her sprawling with a little squeak he knows she will vehemently deny. His sketchbook and charcoal fall to the floor as his nose brushes against hers. “When?”

He can feel the quick staccato of her breath, see the pleased surprise in her eyes. Oh wow. She’d been right. He should have done this a long time ago, especially if it meant looks like this. 

“My last meeting’s at seven,” she offers. 

“Eight then. Wear jeans.” His hands smooth over the curve of her for a moment, blatant appreciation. “And, uh, you may need to change.”

She looks down at the grey smudges against the white of her blouse and curses. Steve grins as she glares, shoves him away and strides off with long, confident steps, his fingerprints smattered over her waist and hips. 

He picks up his sketchbook again and flips to a fresh page, hand moving, sketching, smudging without much thought on his part. He knows exactly which Maria he wants to immortalize on his page. 

His.


	21. I wish I could hate you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You see me."
> 
> "Of course I do. Who couldn't?"

It’s late. They’re in the penthouse of Avengers Tower because it’s late and they’d had one of their ‘family meals’ - because Tony is surprisingly big on family and Pepper is literally the most persuasive person on the planet. But now it’s late. Really, really late. 

Yet neither of them move. 

It’s a strange feeling, sitting on Tony’s wide couch, the room silent and still since everyone’s headed off to bed. But Steve’s head is buzzing and it doesn’t seem like Maria’s too keen on leaving just yet either. 

It’s been a strange night, a strange week really where he’s seen more than Maria than he thinks he had when they were both at SHIELD. More than that, he’s been privy to an incredibly relaxed Maria, who offers broad smiles and gentle touches. 

Maybe it’s Bucky, he thinks, the man back from his first mission with the ‘good guys’, whole and unshattered. Maria’s been hovering though, eyes watching his old friend. And it’s left something dirty in his gut, something that he most certainly doesn’t like. 

More than that, he wants to pretend it hasn’t resulted him in doing utterly ridiculous things, things like reaching out for her, sliding by her close enough that he knows she feels it. None of it is his style, has never been his style because he spent so long being this strangely large man with the mentality of his much smaller counterpart. 

But apparently, when it comes to Maria Hill, all of his rules go out the window. 

Her heavy sigh brings his attention up from his beer bottle. She’s picking at the label on hers, a surprising display of vulnerability that makes him want to wrap her up. His crush is getting out of control. 

She fixes him with those eyes, murky and wary. “I wish I could hate you, you know.”

No, no he doesn’t, because he has never wished such a thing ever. Not to anyone, and definitely,  _definitely_  not her. “What?”

She sighs again, looks back down at the label on her beer bottle. “Hating you would be easier.”

“I don’t follow.”

Her smile is nothing like the beautiful, stunning ones he’s seen this week. This is a brittle thing, and he hates it.  _Hates_  it. 

“Don’t do that,” he snaps despite himself, because he can’t look at her with that face. 

“Sorry?”

And he knows. She’d started this conversation, but he knows himself too well. So he places his bottle on the coffee table - between a handful of bullets and some formula of Tony’s and God, if that’s not indicative of their lives - and folds his hands, bracing his forearms on his thighs. 

“That smile. You’ve been smiling all week, really smiling. Don’t- Don’t put on a mask.”

He expects her to lash out, to tell him to go fuck himself or something. She would, he knows, without compunction or concern for him and his feelings, instead, her smile slips into something more genuine and he finds his breath catching in his chest. 

“And there’s why.”

He knows his confusion is all over his face and doesn’t bother asking the obvious follow up. 

“You-” She seems to stop herself, take a step back. “We’re colleagues,” she begins slowly. “We work together. Sometimes. But that’s not enough for you.”

Of course it’s not enough for him, he wants to tell her. It shouldn’t be enough for anyone, not with what they do, not with how they do it. Not when there are so many incredible people with such varied backstories that have all decided to become some sort of found family. 

But mostly, not with her. 

Not since she’d started helping him with Bucky. Not since he returned with his PTSD suffering best friend and instead of coddling him, Maria had merely raised an eyebrow and told him not to take housekeeping tips from Natasha as she’d tossed the redhead a knife from the kitchen table. 

Not since she’d shown that there was an attractive, intriguing woman beneath the cold cloak she pulled over herself. 

“Should it be?”

“It’s enough for everyone else.”

“Bullshit.”

She doesn’t jump, just arches an eyebrow in surprise. He finds himself running a hand through his hair. 

“Do you know how many times I’ve caught you with your head together with Bucky’s?” he begins. “Do you think I don’t see how you know when Bruce needs a tea break, or Nat needs a mission?”

This time it’s her mouth that drops open, just a little, just enough. He’s okay with it in some twisted ways. He’s used to being the person no one sees, and it’s bred in him a strange sort of observational skill set. He’s no spy, but he does see.

He sees her. 

“You know when Pepper’s working too hard, you know when to argue with Tony and when he’s just being an ass.”

She chuckles a little. It’s a good sound, most especially because it helps her shoulders relax. She doesn’t look near as tense, as argumentative and he finds himself relaxing in response. 

“You’re not… Cold.”

She glances away then, the strangest smile on her face. “That’s why it would be easier to hate you.”

She puts up a hand when he goes to speak, the frustration obviously evident on his face. He hates it when she speaks in riddles and she knows it. 

“I’m support,” she starts slowly, carefully. “I’m indispensable and I’m damn good at what I do, but I’m not the one in the limelight. I am very, very happy with that.”

He gets that, maybe more than she realizes. The number of times he wishes he were invisible, just for five minutes…

“But you don’t let me stay there.” She fixes her gaze on him, intense enough that his breath catches. “You see me.”

“Of course I do. Who couldn’t?” 

She blows out a breath, sets her own bottle on the floor by her feet so she can clench her fists in her lap. “You pay attention. I don’t know what to do with that.”

He can think of a few things, dinners and drinks and movie nights; sparring in the middle, maybe some missions and battles. 

“I want to hate you, Steve, because you knock me off balance. Because I can’t find my footing around you. Every time I think I have you in a nice little box you do something to change one of the edges and I want to hate you for that. I want to hate you for not being predictable, for being imperfect, for making things complicated and for the way you stick in my head.”

His breath catches in his chest, eyes wide. 

“But I can’t.”

“Oh.”

“Hating you would be easier. I’d know what to do with that.”

But that’s not what she feels. He’s been reading between the lines with her long enough to see that hate is definitely not what’s going on here. Intrigue, maybe, something else that’s hovering just there. Then her eyebrows curve down, frown lines form between her brows and Steve finds himself yearning to reach out and smooth them away. 

“I don’t know what to do with… this.”

It’s his chance. He’s not blind enough not to see it. “I do.”

The frown disappears, her face smooths out, and he finds himself wondering if this woman, who is perpetually and viciously in control, would like someone else to tell her what to do here, with this. With him. 

“We have dinner.”

Her breath hitches. He can see it in the split second it happens, the way her chest freezes and her mouth drops open. She has herself under control a second later and he has to look away to hide the grin. 

“Okay,” she says and yes, he’d suggested it, but he can’t honestly say he’d expected such an easy acquiescence. 

So he smiles, wide and bright, watches more of the tension leak out of her shoulders. “Okay.”


	22. Please don't leave

“Please don’t leave.”

Don’t leave? He shouldn’t even be here to begin with. He should be watching the ballgame with Sam in a bar, not running at the first chime of her ‘emergency’ text. Which, as it turns out, hadn’t been an emergency at all, so much as a social situation where he’d had to play the significant other to the woman he’s half in love with. 

A woman who knows such and played on such. They both know it. 

He turns to face her, tries very hard not to pay attention to the alluring way the shadows are playing across the strong lines of her face. He’s surprised at how much will power it’s taking not to just… shake her. 

“You know, I haven’t felt this on display since the USO tour. And that includes the meeting with the Joint Chiefs last month.”

She recoils like he slapped her. Maybe he had. He’s surprised to find how much he hates the guilt that rises up in him. 

“Look, you don’t get it. I-”

“Needed a scapegoat? A cover story? For people who are apparently your ‘friends’?”

“It’s a matter of national security.”

“It’s a matter of pride,” he shoots back, done pulling his punches. He runs a hand through his hair. “Maria, I can’t do this with you. You know that.”

Because it’s not fair. Fundamentally, it’s not fair, and Maria has a well-developed sense of fair play. 

“I’m sorry, okay? I should have been up front about the emergency.”

“You shouldn’t have texted me in the first place.” he retorts. “You’ve made yourself perfectly clear, Lieutenant. You and I, not a thing. Never going to be a thing. I’m trying to respect that, but it’s not something I can just turn off.”

“I know that.”

“Exactly.” Steve steps into her, is entirely unsurprised when she doesn’t retreat an inch. God, he wants her. “You‘re playing on what you know I feel for you. You knew I’d come, that I wouldn’t blink.”

“Steve-”

“And more than that, you knew I’d play along. You know I can’t-”

He stiffens when she steps closer, when she leans into him and braces her palms on his chest. Her face is earnest, as honest as he’s ever seen it. 

“Yes,” she says. “Of course I knew. Of course I know.”

He growls and wraps his hands around her wrists to push her away. 

“I didn’t expect to like it.” 

He freezes, caught, his fingers wrapped around her wrists and Maria close enough that he can feel the humid warmth of her nervous exhale against his face. 

She glances away. “Yes, I texted you because there wasn’t a doubt that you’d come running.” Her fingers flex against his chest. He’s not wholly sure he’s ever seen her this nervous. “But I also texted you because I wanted you here.”

He’s sure he stops breathing. He’s pretty sure his heart ceases to function too, and he definitely can’t find any brain power. “Maria?”

She surprises the hell out of him when she leans forward, presses her forehead to his chest. “I expected… possession. Nerves. I expected to feel stifled.”

He is very, very much not following. “Maria.”

“I expected… I thought you’d be all over me. That you were the type to touch all the time and keep a woman close to your side at all time.”

“You don’t need me there.”

Her head comes up, surprise everywhere. “What?”

He shrugs. He’s so off-balance with her. “You don’t need me there all the time. You take care of yourself just fine without me.”

“But you want to be there.”

“Yes,” he says. “I want to be there but…” He puffs out a breath. “Look, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. You don’t need anyone. I get that. You can take care of yourself and you’ve saved me on a number of different occasions. That was never what this was about.”

She blinks at him and he realizes she’s misunderstood him. Completely. 

“I like you because you don’t need me. Because you don’t always see Captain America. You don’t put me up on a pedestal… Maria.” He can’t stop the way his hands come up to her cheeks. “You see me as a human being. Messed up and fallible and out of his depth, but not something to be coddled and stroked. Real.”

She snorts on a kind of laugh. “Sometimes I can’t figure out how you are. Real.”

He growls and the laugh he gets in return is a little more genuine. Her hands fist in his shirt as she looks up at him. 

“Stay.”

“Maria-”

Then she does the unthinkable and leans up to press her mouth to his. It takes him a moment - and this time he knows he’s stopped breathing - before he kisses her back in earnest, before his hand slides over her shoulder until he’s pressed against the bottom of her spine. Maria comes willingly, sliding her hands up until she can press her palms to his pulse point, thumbs beneath his ears. 

“Stay,” she says again, this time against his mouth. “For an hour. Then we can… get a drink.”

He pulls away far enough to see her face, eyes that are shockingly expressive. “Agent Hill. Are you asking me out on a date?”

She chews her lip. “It’s… yes. But.”

But it doesn’t have to mean anything. It may not mean anything. But she’s willing to try. 

And Steve is more than willing to let her. 


	23. Kiss Me

“Kiss me.”

“What?”

Maria glances up, utterly started, to find Steve over her shoulder. He’s already reaching out, a broad hand spanning her back as she turns out of reflex. He’s close, so close and she hates the way her breath backs up in her lungs. 

“Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable.”

He sounds like he’s parroting something he’s heard before, but Maria can’t be arsed to guess who. She’s a little too busy trying to get her synapses to fire. 

“Yes,” she manages, hating the way he’s got her off balance and flustered, her hands braced against his chest. “But there’s a number of people around who-”

“Maria.”

Her jaw snaps shut mid-protest. 

“Look, just… Please?”

No. She’s going to say no. She has to say no. Because for one thing she cannot be seen kissing men as famous as Steve Rogers at public functions. Not when she’s here in the capacity of his ‘handler’ - a term she and Pepper have both used loosely to mean ‘keeping the man company in places he really, really doesn’t want to be’ - and when she can still vividly remember what it’s like to dance with him pressed against her. 

Look, she’s not stupid. She’s not the Steve Rogers’ girlfriend material. Not that she’s looking to be, of course, but if she were looking for a man, Steve wouldn’t be on her radar. She has too many proverbial blemishes on her soul for that. 

But when Steve is looking down at her with that damn puppy dog face - and there’s obviously a problem that she would much,  _much_  rather take care of with a well-placed glare and maybe some really petty posturing - even she is not immune. 

He lets out a surprised sound when she yanks him down to her. There’s a moment she seriously wonders if he’s going to flail, his hands relaxing on her hips for a fraction of a second before he’s gripping tighter, pulling her in. It’s longer than she’d meant, and it takes her much longer than she’d wanted for her brain to kick in and shove her back - and she is going to  _kill_ Nat for lying about Steve’s skills here. 

“Wow.”

She winces, but as she looks around she’s grateful to find most people are too damn stunned to have heard such an exclamation. When the sound filters back in, when people start turning back to their conversations, she looks up at Steve, finds herself smoothing his lapels where her hands have clenched. 

“There. That should do it.”

He can barely swallow around the lump in his throat as he looks down at her, eyes blazing and fierce. 

“We should have done that a long time ago.”

She jolts, but he’s already slipping a hand down her arm to grip one of his. She stumbles as he tugs her along until he pulls her up against him on the dance floor. 

(Neither of them speak of it again that night, but the next morning a yellow rose shows up at her front door with an invitation to dinner. 

An invitation she graciously accepts.)


	24. The paint's supposed to go where?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he lets Nat take him to get paint, he doesn't quite expect what she had in mind.

Steve eyes the shelf in front of him rather skeptically. “I’m sorry. The paint’s supposed to go where?”

“On you,” Natasha replies with a smirk as she browses the options. “Or Maria. Steve, it’s edible body paint. Where did you think it was supposed to go?”

God, he’d known bringing Natasha along would be a terrible idea. He’d had visions of craft stores and acrylics until she’d pulled up in front of a sex shop.

A freaking sex shop.

And yes, he’s not a virgin thank you very much, but he can’t honestly say that he’s totally comfortable with these kinds of places. Having sex is one thing. Broadcasting it, no matter how normal that may be in this ‘new time’ of his, is another matter entirely.

Especially when that sex involves Maria Hill.

“I don’t think that’s what she meant when she asked to see me paint.”

Natasha, of course, rolls her eyes. “So? Don’t be such an old man, Rogers. Live a little.”

He frowns. He is living, he thinks. Maria’s helping, but so is Tony and Pepper and Darcy and a number of other inhabitants of the Tower. He doesn’t need, well, sex paint to do that. Plus, it’s not like the sex life he does have is anything less than creative or satisfying. He really doesn’t think he needs paint to spice it up.

“Tasha-”

“Steve. Actual painting is dull!”

He sighs. He knows when it’s useless to argue. It’s how he ends up with a couple of ‘paints’ that he really doesn’t expect to ever pull out of the closet.

Except.

He runs into Bucky at the Tower, Natasha long since disappeared from his side, utterly resigned to an afternoon of useless agonizing over something he knows Maria did not mean sexually. It’s just not her style.

Bucky takes one look at the bag and Steve’s face and a look of resignation washes over his expression. “Natalia?”

“Are you surprised?” Steve replies. 

“Nope.” The former assassin looks at the bouquet in his hand and Steve watches as a look he knows all too well passes over his friend’s face. “Trade you.”

“What?”

Bucky waves to the flowers. “Darcy.”

Steve nods. Not a surprise there. Jane’s intern is a romantic to the extreme and even Steve knows that’s not the way Bucky’s relationship with Natasha really works.

“Flowers for paint.”

“Seriously?”

But there’s a glint in Bucky’s eyes, something that tells Steve there’s a game afoot and he’s an unwilling pawn. He sighs. “Why does she do this to me?”

“Because it’s fun,” Bucky answers, already snatching the bag from Steve’s hand. “Plus. Flowers are more your thing.”

And something Steve knows Maria will appreciate more than sex paint.

(They do go over much better, and as is her habit, she pulls one out to snip off the stem. They don’t talk about the box of dried flowers she keeps in a dark corner of her closet.

And when Nat slides into a seat next to him in the common area the next day, looking smug and pleased he almost bangs his head on the table.

“God, Nat, you couldn’t have just suggested it? You had to drag me along to a sex shop to get your boyfriend to paint you during sex?”

She is the cat that ate the canary and grins at him like such. “This way was so much more fun.”

Steve groans.)


	25. Steve talks to Peggy about Maria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CHWeek 2015 Day 2 - First Love

When the dust settles around the fall of the Triskelion, Steve visits Peggy. He’s lucky this time, that she’s got a handle on her faculties. Her mind is as sharp as ever as she fixes him with steady eyes. 

“Can’t ever do things quietly, can you Captain.”

He smiles, grins really, shy and boyish and every inch the man she’d known in the war. “No other way to do it ma’am.”

“Well. It’s your legacy you tore down. I guess you have a say.”

His breath catches, the admission clearer than it’s ever been between them. “Peg.”

She waves a frail hand at everything in his voice, the way she has a habit of doing to remind him that it’s a hatchet she’s long-since buried. She’s lived a full life without him, been loved like he thinks he would have loved her. It’s been a comfort to him, and a way to help him reorient himself in this century. 

“And Director Fury?”

“In the wind,” Steve answers. 

“Of course he is. Too big on secrecy that man. Never was very good at choosing the right people at the right time for the right plan. Now, his deputy. She’s always known the right way to do things.”

“Maria?”

“Hill. Lieutenant, I believe.”

His surprise isn’t comfortable. Maria is… Well, different now. She doesn’t feel as aloof to him as she had and it’s no longer a unique or surprising thing to find her curled up on the couch of Avengers’ Tower, coffee in one hand, tablet in the other. It’s a side of Maria he’s enjoyed seeing. 

“I am 90, Steven Grant,” she says, every inch the prim SSR agent that had caught his eye seven decades ago. “Not unobservant. Besides, it’s not like I could leave my organization in the hands of just any old SHIELD agent. Look what happens when you’re not careful.”

He barks out a laugh, unable to help himself. Her lucid moments are getting fewer and farther between but when she’s on, she seems so, so much younger. “You know Maria.”

Peggy sniffs. “Good girl, that one. Nicholas Fury will do for now, I suppose, but that girl. That girl is going to  _rule_.”

Steve blinks. “Maria-”

“Is built for leadership,” Peggy tells him, head held high. “And she will have it, you mark my words.”

“She already does,” Steve finds himself murmuring, thinking back to how steady her voice had been in his ear, the way she’s already integrating herself into Avengers business. Sometimes he thinks that her position for SI is a front. Well, maybe not a front, but a carefully contrived and coy way of keeping her front and centre in a game that is all the more vicious these days. 

“And she’s not really a girl anymore, Peg.”

“Oh, noticed did you? About time.”

“Peggy,” he groans helplessly. 

Peggy snorts. “Steven.”

He glances at her through split fingers, a familiar tactic between them when he had Bucky had been maybe a little too reckless in the field. 

“That didn’t work in the war and it won’t work now. That girl is exactly your type.”

“Type?”

Peggy just hums, but a moment later, she softens because they both know she’s never been able to hold that indignant mood for long. “Steve. You deserve what I had. What I still have.”

“Hydra’s still out there.”

“And you will not be able to fight them alone.” She lifts her hand, and he reaches for it, cups it between his at her unspoken demand. “SHIELD was not just your home, Steve. You are not the only one who lost.”

He thinks of Sitwell, of what he’d been to Maria and the loyalty she’d thought she had. He thinks of her rants on Brock Rumlow, the twist of her face when she pulls off the sky-high heels that are now her uniform. She lives a different life.

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll do more than think, young man. You’ll do. She’s going to need someone to support her when she’s running SHIELD. You’ll do.”

His eyebrow rises. “Thanks Peg.”

“Sarcasm does not suit you.”

“I don’t know, kind of fits like a glove.”

“Steven.”

“Margaret.”

She huffs, but the deep exhale sends her into a coughing fit and Steve feels his heart drop. It’s a sign these days, a hard reset of her brain that leaves her weak and frail in that hospital bed. 

“Steve?”

He tries not to sigh, he really does. 

“You’re here.”

“Of course I am.”

And though the end of his visit is more painful for the beginning, he knows he’s also leaving the retirement home with a lighter heart and a new insight. 

Maria Hill, Director of SHIELD. 

Steve grins to himself on the train. Yeah, he can see it. 


	26. Kisses and the Big Reveal

They don’t tell anyone. 

It’s not shame and it’s not embarrassment. It’s not even their need for privacy. It just… never comes up. Maria is a naturally private person and it’s not like Steve is really all the more revealing about his life, but at the ore of it they just… don’t say anything. It’s not a secret, but they don’t make a show of it either. 

It’s not his fault that no one catches the gentle kiss he presses to her cheek when he’s the last one out of a briefing room for a mission. It’s not her fault that no one else has noticed them steal away before he leaves so he can brush a gentle kiss to her forehead. It’s not their fault that no one sees the kiss he presses to her neck over her first coffee or the way she tips his head back for a kiss when he’s drawing. 

And then, of course, it happens. She disappears, Stark Town Car and all. Natasha’s the first one to say Steve’s never taken to a mission with the single-minded focus he does finding Maria. Not since they’d discovered Bucky’s little bolt hole in northern Siberia. Clint’s the one who points out that he certainly sees Steve leaving Maria’s office on the regular. It opens the dam: Bucky mentions his unshakable trust in her, the way he’s a looser fighter with her on coms; Tony thinks he saw them cuddling in the dark of a movie night; Bruce softly admits he’s seen the way Steve gravitates towards Maria when she’s in the room and the way he’s glued to his phone when she’s not. 

Yet, while they search for her, every sentence they utter is speculation. It isn’t until they find her – well, more appropriately she finds them because Maria Hill has never needed to be rescued – that they get confirmation. 

Because Steve’s off the minute he sees her, all but bowling her over right there in the doorway of Avengers Tower. She’s dusty, she’s bruised and bloody and too-damn-thin (says Clint), but Steve doesn’t seem to care. He dips her over his arm, ignores the vaguely indignant sound she makes and takes her mouth. It’s a scorching kiss that leaves absolutely no doubt as to what kind of relationship they have, the way she lets him a testament to just how deep it goes. 

But it’s Pepper that speaks first, having heard the news from the office and trailing in to see if her security director was really as okay as JARVIS made her sound. She arches an eyebrow at the display then turns to the team. 

“Well. That answers that question.”


	27. "I dreamt about you"

Sometimes Maria thinks Steve spends too much time in a hospital bed, most especially for a man with his serum-enhanced abilities. Though, to be fair, it’s not like he doesn’t have a myriad of people who would be more than happy to sit by his bedside while he sleeps through the heeling of a three inch gash in his stomach. 

(Deep. Dangerous. Bloody and paralyzing. Not usually the injury that would keep him down long until Maria finds out there had been a lacerated liver involved and that he’d been lucky the gash hadn’t managed to impact his stomach at all. The three days he’s faded in and out of consciousness makes more sense now.)

“Maria?” 

She feels her stomach jolt at his name and forces herself to raise her eyes slowly, to arch an eyebrow with it. The way he uses her first name does that to her, injects a careful familiarity and a distinct sense of intimacy she shouldn’t like as much as she does. 

(She likes it because of the trust it shows, likes it because she knows if there is anyone in the world who may make her believe in the human populace again, it’s him. It’s taken her a while to realize that’s not Captain America, that’s just Steve.) 

“You’ve been out six hours,” she tells him, because according to both Barnes and Romanov it’s the first question he always asks. 

He hums a little. “I dreamt about you.”

That pulls her up short. It’s not easy to surprise her, especially for a man as clear and honest as Steve but, well. If he can convince her humans aren’t all useless, maybe she shouldn’t be as shocked that he can surprise her as well.

(He’s never been anything she’s expected and yet simultaneously she thinks he’s entirely predictable. But then again, she’s seen how easy it is for him to be the Captain America everyone wants to see and the Steve he wants to be. It would be terrifying if it weren’t impressive. 

She’s pretty sure the ‘bad at spying’ thing is just a ruse too. She just hasn’t called him out on it.)

“Was I kicking your ass?”

His laugh is a little rough and the cough that follows makes her think about reaching for the call button, even if they’re far enough into his recovery that he should be able to heal with natural sleep instead of the drug-induced coma. “Chewing it out actually.”

She shrugs, makes herself look back down at her tablet. “I’ll save that for when you can stand on your own.”

Except then he’s reaching out, flailing a little until his hand finds her wrist. “Had to.”

She knows this. She’s seen the after action report, seen the unpredictable way civilians had scattered about. It’s not his fault Banner wouldn’t have been able to get there in time, nor is it his fault that Stark had been across the battlefield. Thor had been in the thick of his own enemies and he’s always been so reluctant to pull Barnes from the tandem fighting he and Romanov pull off so well. Holding up a building isn’t for the faint of heart, after all. 

(Except while he’d been holding up that building, Hydra had attacked and, well. Hence the cavern that had been the wound in his abdomen. 

Maria knows she never wants to see something like that again.) 

Her retort is cut off by the tug on her hand, by the way he brings it towards him until he can brush a sloppy kiss to her palm. “Didn’t mean to go against the plan.”

No. He wouldn’t. Not when it’s her plan. Not since he’d admitted her plans make him feel safe, make him feel like they really are going to come out with most of the team relatively uninjured. Regardless, it’s not the admission so much as the brush of his mouth that pulls her up short. 

“Captain-“

“Steve. You should call me Steve.” 

She sighs because she knows, because she is observant and she can tell when a man wants her the way Steve does. He’s not shy about it really. Guarded, maybe, but certainly not shy. 

“I’ll make you a deal,” she says, because it’s getting hard to focus with the heat of his palm against hers, the way he’s settled her hand on his chest. It’s awkward, leaning over him like that, but he doesn’t seem willing to relinquish her hand any time soon. “You ask me that when you’re on your feet and we can negotiate.”

His eyes light, flare and she realizes that calling it a negotiation may have been a bit of a tactical boo-boo. He is resourceful, she knows, and giving him an inch can often result in him taking it a logical and calmly rational mile. What makes it worse is the utterly endearing face he turns to her, head lolling on the pillow. 

“Stay?”

No. Absolutely not. Except he still has her hand and he’s tangling his free one with her fingers, keeping her there, dragging her closer. 

(And that’s it. That’s all. She does not want to stay. She has no need for the steady thump of his heart beneath her palms, the scorching heat of his body, the hard line of his shoulder against her collarbone. It has nothing to do with the way she wants to crawl up on the bed, feel the rise and fall of his chest and remind herself that, stupid move or not, he made it out alive.)

So she props her tablet up at his side, her arm stretched across his chest and gets back to work.


	28. stuck in the elevator and forced to confront their feelings

He can’t say how long he’s had this, well, crush. He doesn’t know when it developed and he sure as hell has no clue how to make it stop. Because Maria Hill can do so much better than Captain America, in so many varied ways. 

(Someone who’s less on display for one. She hates it and he’d hate to put her through it. Someone less overshadowing too, because he abhors when he gets all the credit for a mission she meticulously planned, for stopping Hydra cells when it’s Maria’s intel that sent them that way in the first place. Someone without a martyr complex, someone who can handle this day, this age, someone who can be her house husband, to take care of her when she won’t without diminishing the incredible woman she is. 

He is none of those things.)

It hasn’t made things awkward, per se. He just… finds it a little difficult to be in the same room as Maria without developing a… problem. And an elevator? Well, elevators are worse. He thinks it’s his 1940s sense of decorum and responsibility that keeps him from all but shoving her against the wall and devouring her. 

Like now. 

It’s pounding in his blood as she hums at her tablet, a little sound she has a habit of making when she’s utterly focused. It’s a beautiful sound, quiet, determined and he knows entirely involuntary. (Clint had pointed it out once. Her glare would have set a glacier on fire. Steve had forced himself to look away and calm down.)

They’re going three floors. That’s it. Three floors, two minutes max and Steve knows he can do it. He’s done six before and while his fingers had been all but twitching by the time he’d pulled himself off the elevator, he’d made it. What he hadn’t counted on was the sudden jerk of the elevator. They were stuck. 

“Shit.”

Her face is utterly unimpressed, staring at the panel like it had personally offended her. He wants to laugh; he can feel it bubbling up in his chest. She’d kill him if he did, he knows. Which is stupid. He’s not convinced he’d be laughing at her. 

(Karma, maybe, for getting him stuck in this damn tiny, confined space; himself for not being able to handle this kind of thing without thinking of what she’d look like pressed against the wall, her legs around his hips.) 

“Shit is right,” he murmurs instead, hands clenching on the bar that circles the tiny box, eyes shuttering closed so he can’t see her. That’s a mistake, because he can smell her instead, light, clean, delicious. 

“Backup generators should have kicked in by now,” she murmurs as she flicks through her tablet. He’d bet she’s pulling up building specs, maybe even checking for the last maintenance report. 

“Essential services only,” he murmurs. “Med bay, command HQ, the landing strip. Elevators aren’t considered essential.”

“Who’s idea was that?”

He blinks his eyes open to offer her a wry smile. It had been hers, a holdover, he’s sure, from days when funding had been tight and Stark wasn’t designing 98% of what they used. It’s only then that he notes her discomfort, the way she shifts on her heels, the vaguely shuttered look on her face. He’s pretty sure she’s not claustrophobic.

“Lieutenant? Is something wrong?”

“No, no,” she says with a wave he knows is supposed to be nonchalant and dismissive. Too bad it’s too sharp to come close to that mark. “I’m stuck in an elevator with a man who hates me with no power and no way to run my facility. Everything’s just fine.”

Well, two of those he can’t fix, but they don’t really matter anyway. He’s a little too focused on that first one. “I’m sorry?”

She’s quick, he knows, smart enough to get his meaning and she offers him an annoyed look. “I’m aware you aren’t my biggest fan, Captain. So excuse me if being stuck in an elevator for an undetermined length of time with only you for company doesn’t sit right with me.”

He recoils. He can’t help himself. Yes, he’s short with her. Yes, he can’t be in the same room for too long and yes, okay, he kind of dances around her at Avengers related events, but hate her? 

“I don’t hate you.”

“Really? You’re doing an excellent job of making it look that way.”

He flinches. “I… didn’t know.”

Her eyebrow goes up. It’s his chance to explain and Christ, he doesn’t want to. She’s going to hate him after this. His hand comes up, a reflexive twitch as he rubs at the back of his neck. 

“It’s not hate,” he says quietly and this time doesn’t try and hide his face when he looks at her. He can feel the emotion burning in his eyes, the clench of his hands bending the bar because this can go so many terrible ways from here. He’s not blind or immune to that. 

But Maria’s face transforms. Surprise, definitely. Shock, awe, confusion, but there’s a look in her eyes that flares just as bright, just as hot as the twisting in his gut. “Holy shit.”

He laughs, this low, rough sound that he’s not sure he’s ever made before in his life. “Yeah,” he says with a wry twist of his mouth, aware everything else is still bright in his gaze. “Not hate.”

“No.” Her head cocks to the side. “Why didn’t you say?”

He huffs. “Say what?” he asks. 

“Anything,” she retorts and he’s surprised to hear frustration in her voice. Annoyance. No disgust, no rejection. 

“Why would I put myself through that?” he asks in response, taking a step forward. He realizes it a second too late, the proverbial moth to the flame and would have taken a step back if it weren’t for the way her back lengthens. There’s challenge in every line of her body and he has never, ever been able to resist a challenge. “Why would I put myself out there when you have your choice.”

“What if you are my choice?”

And Christ. Christ. This is why he wants her, he thinks, why he can barely breathe when she’s in the room. She knows what she wants, always has and until him (until him? Come on, Steve, get it together.) has never held back in making that clear. 

He’s stepped closer now. Another step and he’ll be able to feel her body heat, he thinks. “You can do better.”

“Than Captain America?”

“Than someone who can’t guarantee he’s going to come home at the end of the day. Than someone who will overshadow your every move without meaning to. They’ll never see you.”

She cocks her head to the side. “They don’t see me now,” she points out. “Did you ever consider that maybe I like it that way?”

“You deserve credit, Maria.”

She shivers. Actually shivers. He watches it slide through her body, leave goosebumps in its wake, bring a flush to her cheeks. It takes him a moment to realize it isn’t his conviction, but the first time he’s ever used her given name. Her head straightens, consideration in every line of her body. 

“I don’t want it,” she tells him, plain and simple and so totally Maria. “I don’t need it and I don’t want it. I know what I’m worth.”

“I’ll put you on display,” he says, even as his hands come up to touch, to take her hips, feel the heat of her in his palms. He can feel the muscle tense and release under his hands. God, she’s so damn strong. “I won’t mean to, but I will.”

She rolls her eyes, offensive if she were any other woman. “You don’t get to choose, Captain. Not really. Not for me.”

“I wouldn’t want to.”

“And yet you are.”

She’s against the wall now. He hadn’t realized each step was pushing her back. His mind flashes with that picture again, her leg around his hip, her fingers spearing through his hair. He swallows and meets her gaze, her blown pupils and the tilt of her lips that hints at a smile. His hand slides up from her hip and he sees her breath hitch as much as he feels it. He drags his hand up her arm, over her shoulder until he can catch her neck, feel the soft brush of her hair against his fingers. 

“Maria.”

“Steve.”

That does it. It shouldn’t, he knows, but God, Christ and all the saints it’s her voice and his name and not his title and…

Shit. 

It doesn’t matter though. Her mouth is warm and wet and her head is tilting back against the wall, letting him drink his fill. This woman, this demanding, headstrong, stubborn, fantastic woman and this moment of surrender… He thinks he would have been able to hang on if there hadn’t been the surrender, the moment where she let him take. He’s under no illusion that she could fight back and would fight back if the mood struck her but she doesn’t. Not at all. She lets him lead, responds in passionate earnest and robs him of his breath.

“No,” she murmurs in acknowledgement when he pulls away. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes just a little glassy and he wants to lean in again, to plunder this time, and devour. His hand is already sliding down her hip, already slipping along her thigh and seriously contemplating lifting her off her killer shoes, but the little smile that dances across her face makes him pause. “Definitely not hate.”

Steve laughs.


	29. how drunk are you right now / i can't even look at you

“Oh my God, Steve, I can’t even look at you right now.”

He huffs and shifts, offers her a look that begs for a rescue. “I don’t think I’m the one who is supposed to feel embarrassed on my own birthday.”

Maria snorts, picks up the star-spangled top hat from where he’s dropped it on the sand. “Did you lose a bet?” 

He looks down at himself, the all-American swim trunks and the American flag towel draped around his shoulders. Even for July fourth, even for Steve’s birthday, it seems over-the-top. 

And very Tony. 

He’s meandered away. Not because he doesn’t want to celebrate his birthday – though he does vaguely resent the fact that Captain America’s birthday coincides with America’s – but because even just the Avengers team can be a little overwhelming. 

“I uh, didn’t have a choice,” he responds. Because it had been the only bathing suit, the only towel available to him. How Tony managed to remove his plain black trunks from his duffle, Steve will never understand. (He suspects Nat and Bucky, actually, because something like this is totally Bucky’s style, even if it probably wasn’t his plan.)

He expects a quiet reply from her, maybe some sympathy despite the fact that he expects her teasing. Instead, she offers him a real, genuine laugh. “Never leave your baggage unattended.”

“That suit’s all you then?” he finds himself asking, even as his brain scolds himself after the fact. She looks beautiful in the white and navy stripes, more modest than Nat’s string bikini – he suspects Bucky’s more than a little bit behind the motivation of that – but not quite Jane’s tank-top and tiny, tiny shorts ensemble. 

(Look there’s… a lot of skin is what he’s saying. Miles of skin, blemished skin, skin that tells her whole story from the jagged line on her shoulder to the three clustered circles in her thigh. He wants to hear them all. Preferably while his mouth maps each one.

She’s beautiful and dangerous and Christ, Bucky had been right, exactly his type. He thinks maybe he’d never stood a chance.)

“It’s July fourth, and I’m on a beach. Fake tanning is stupid but hell if I’ll be the only woman in New York who looks like a ghost by the end of August.”

He barks out a laugh then because while the delivery is blunt, he knows he wishes she could be just this witty, just this relaxed more often. She’s stunning like this, wind in her hair, sand on her calves and the sun in her eyes. 

“Plus, after sharing locker rooms at SHIELD, Tony Stark isn’t going to be the one to scare me into a one piece.”

He’s not sure why he reaches out and isn’t sure he has the full focus to understand the way she lets him trace the line of the halter, his fingers fluttering over the strong curve of her shoulder. “It suits you.”

He expects maybe an arched eyebrow, definitely a witty retort to remind him that she is a woman, yes, but she is an agent and that kind of has a certain effect on her body and her perceptions of beauty. Instead, she laughs, her face softer than he’s ever seen. Then she surprises him, pushes up on her tiptoes and fixes her mouth to his. His hands bracket her hips immediately, the warm sun-kissed skin of her waist over those tiny, tiny bikini bottoms. His thumb strokes a knife scar just above her pelvis as she all but devours him. He can taste the alcohol, strong on her tongue, but there’s a quiet taste at the back that he thinks must be her. 

Eventually she pulls back, drops to flat feet. “Thank you.”

“How drunk are you right now?” he blurts as she pops the hat onto her head.   
“Not even close to as drunk as Tony wishes I was,” she retorts. “Romanov’s not the only one who knows how to hold her liquor.”

He blows out a strangely shaky breath as he watches her, as she lets him watch her. There’s nothing hidden in her face, no strange crinkle of her mouth, no hidden secrets in her eyes. It makes him feel brave and bold, spurred on by a not-quite compliment that had resulted in a hell of a kiss. He reaches out, tips the hat just a little to the side, strokes the pads of his fingers against her cheek on the way down. 

“America suits you Lieutenant Hill.”

And even if she’s not as drunk as Tony thinks she is, she must be more than a little uninhibited because she regards him under pretty dark lashes and says, “He does indeed, Captain. He does indeed.”


	30. Bruce suggest Steve take his own advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AOU SPOILERS

“You know, Captain. You’re, uh, not so bad at this advice stuff.”

Bruce is unsurprised to see the tight, fake smile Steve gives in response. He is the undisputed champion of waiting too long, yes, but he’s also the reigning champion of not following his own advice. Or maybe he just thinks that they way he looks at Lieutenant Hill isn’t quite as obvious as it totally is. 

“Have you ever thought of taking your own advice?”

Steve’s laughter is quiet and resigned as he looks down at his bottle. “Not my thing. I have a job to do.”

“So do the rest of us. It doesn’t seem to stop Tony and Thor. Or Clint.”  
Not that they have confirmation on Clint, but Bruce has some very, very strong suspicions. 

“It’s very different, choosing this and falling into it.”

“You took a chance, taking Erskine’s serum,” Bruce murmurs, his eyes floating over Steve’s shoulder. The lieutenant has wrapped Steve’s jacket around her shoulders, slid her arms through the sleeves and while Bruce is not exactly the poster child for solid relationships, he thinks it maybe it’s a claim the lieutenant has chosen. “But I don’t think the choice you made precludes everyone else’s.”  
Steve glances over his shoulder and Bruce has the absolute pleasure of seeing his unflappable captain start. It seems he hadn’t even realized Hill had picked up the jacket, let alone slid it on and the look that flares in his eyes is not just simple pleasure. 

“It looks good on her,” Bruce murmurs, unable to stop the little smile from tipping up the edges of his mouth. “She looks comfortable.”

And oh, oh the metaphor. He would look good with her. They would look good together. And Hill is never uncomfortable, not even around the Big Guy. He finds himself considering if she’d ever let the captain make her feel uncomfortable. He doubts it. She’s too self-confident, too sure of herself. If there’s ever a woman that will not stand aside for Captain America, he thinks maybe it’s Hill. 

So he offers Steve a kind of sad smile. “You’ve a better chance than I do.”  
Steve’s eyes flick over his head to where they both know Natasha is playing at bartender, then back down to his bottle. “It’s not as obvious.”

“Are you sure about that, Captain?” 

Steve glances over his shoulder and Bruce knows he catches Hill’s eye because there’s a flush that rises in his all-American cheeks. “No,” he admits ruefully.

“No,” Bruce agrees. “And as the leading expert on waiting too long, don’t you think maybe you should change that?” 

Steve laughs, shakes his head, then empties his bottle. He can’t get drunk, they all know that, but Bruce wonders if maybe the action of downing a bottle of beer is as fortifying as the alcohol itself. 

“Tit for tat, Doctor,” Steve says as he cants towards Hill’s laughter. “Maybe it’s time for both of us to stop being afraid.”

And he strides away, doesn’t even hitch when Hill’s eyes find his, when the slow, dangerous smile curls her mouth. Bruce finds himself laughing a little, then glancing down at his shoes feeling surprisingly like he’s intruding like a moment. He sees the red of Natasha’s hair out of the corner of his eye and sighs. 

After all, courage is easier said than done.


	31. i'm going to need you to put on some underwear + Clint's POV

It is a perfect fucking storm. 

Most of the facility knows better. When Maria’s at the Avengers Facility his quarters - and hers, though that tends to be universally true - are out of bounds. 

But it wouldn’t be the first time someone from the ‘new’ Avengers had come looking for them before their allotted first meetings of the day. Emergencies aren’t really convenient for sharing a bed and both he and Maria prefer to think of themselves as always on call, together or apart. Plus, as it turns out, their relationship is kind of the worst-kept secret between Wanda, Sam, Rhodey, Nat and Vision. 

The thing is, the Avengers have no idea. Not out of any perverse sense of hiding or lying - it’s not his style, nor Maria’s - but simply the fact that neither of them had the urge to tell anyone. It isn’t a necessity, what others do and don’t know, and it’s not like Tony’s been to visit since Sokovia. Thor either, though if the chatter is any indication he’s got his own things to deal with. No one knows where Banner is - Steve suspects that’s a lie, but if Fury and Maria don’t want to tell him, he knows at least Maria has a good reason - and Clint, as far as Steve knows, is still happily playing house, baby Nathaniel included. 

So when the knock comes on Maria’s door when he’s fresh from the shower and towelling off in the cooler temperature of her bedroom, Steve merely wraps a towel around his waist. It wouldn’t be the first, nor likely the last, that any of his teammates have seen him either shirtless, or shower fresh. 

(Plus, his money’s on Nat, whose favourite game is still trying to make him blush to his hairline. He enjoys showing her that some of his shame is wearing off. He’s not too sorry Nat can’t really take credit for it.)

However, it is definitely not Natasha on the other side of Maria’s door. 

Clint arches an eyebrow. “I’m not sure this is quite what Laura had in mind when she told me to report for active duty status.”

“I’m not sure you’re quite the visitor I expected,” Steve shoots back, even as his face heats. “Nat tell you?” 

“Yeah, look, I’m all for embodying the literal American icon, but I’m going to need you to put some boxers on before you say anything else.”

“Barton, what part of ‘my office’ skipped through your vacation brain?” 

Steve’s never been so glad to see Maria in his life, doubly glad when he finds her dressed. Her hair’s still down, still damp, still curling at the ends, but she is, at least, presentable. 

He beats a hasty retreat, in part because yeah, he likes Clint well enough but he does not want to have this conversation in simply a towel and because if he doesn’t, he thinks he’ll shut the door in Clint’s face and drag Maria back to her bedroom to mess her up again. 

(They’re gone when he gets out, but he finds Clint later at the state-of-the-art archery range. Steve doesn’t even get the chance to open his mouth before an arrow is whizzing past his head.

“You hurt her, and I won’t miss.”

Steve nods, solemn because he gets it. Fury’d given him a similar talk. Nat too. 

“And for God sakes, Rogers, put pants on when you open the door.”)

* * *

 

Just go to her suite, Nat had said. She won’t mind, Nat had promised. We do it all the time, Nat had sworn. But when Rogers opens the door in a towel, Clint knows he’s been set up. 

Look, it’s not like the man isn’t built, and Clint is secure enough in his masculinity to notice and appreciate it without being creepy. Except this is Maria’s suite and there are things he doesn’t want to know or think about when it comes to Maria. 

(He owes Maria a lot. He does. He owes her the same faith and hope and trust she showed a damn useless carnie when he’d first started with SHIELD. He owes her for backing him when he’d brought Nat in, for supporting him in the aftermath of Phil and Loki. 

He owes her for saving his life. In all of the possible definitions of the phrase.)

But Clint’s been a spy too long to let any of that show on his face. Instead, while half his mind starts plotting how to get Nat back, he offers Rogers a raised eyebrow. “I’m not sure this is what Laura had in mind when she told me to report for active duty status.”

To his credit, Rogers doesn’t so much as blink even if his cheeks do go a little pink. Instead, he looks a little resigned. “Not sure you’re quite the visitor I expected either. Nat tell you?”

No, no she hadn’t. Nat hadn’t said a damn thing about Maria and the good Captain shacking up. And it’s not that he’s  _against_  it, just the woman’s like his damn sister, the sibling you’re supposed to have, and Clint is intimately familiar with Rogers’ martyr complex… Clint’s just… not sure. 

Not against it, but not sure. 

Clint sighs. “Yeah, look, I’m all for embodying the literal American icon, but I’m going to need you to put some boxers on before you say anything else.”

Rogers actually rubs at the back of his head, his mouth opening to respond when Maria steps out from the bedroom. 

“Barton, what part of ‘my office’ skipped through your vacation brain?”

Saved by the scolding. It doesn’t save him from the ridiculous look on Rogers’ face - the same look he has a habit of giving Laura just before they, ahem, _practice_  - but he resolutely turns to Maria and lets her scold him the whole way to her office. 

(Later, Rogers comes into the range, Clint thinks with every intention of apologizing. Thing is, he has something of his own to say and he does not want to rehash the idea of Rogers and Maria and what it means to find him in her suite. 

Instead, without looking, he lets an arrow fly. It thunks into the wall beside the captain’s head. 

“You hurt her, and I won’t miss.”

He sees Rogers nod out of the corner of his eye, knows he’s already had the same talk with Nat and Fury from the way he doesn’t blink and he doesn’t argue. 

“And for God sakes, Rogers, put pants on when you open the door.”)


	32. Sick Maria + inadvertent confession of feelings/attraction

He finds her passed out in the hallway. 

Like,  _passed out._

He’s at her side a moment later, hands running over her slim form. There’s no blood, thank God, though he’s willing to bet she’ll have a hell of a goose egg on her head. Not injured. But he can feel the spiked heat of her body. She’s burning up. 

He hisses as he goes to a knee, as he carefully and gently turns her to her back. He hears her whimper and relief floods through him. Alive. Burning up, but alive. 

“Steve.”

“Hi,” he says, quiet and gentle. He’s not quite sure how he manages to get his hands under her body but he shifts her carefully into his arms. 

“No.”

It’s weak and shaky and God, God she’s scaring the hell out of him because this is not Maria Hill. “Yes. You fainted in the middle of the hallway.”

“Don’t faint.”

He chuckles despite himself, murmurs quietly to her when the movement of his body jolts hers. “Want to tell me how you ended up face down in the executive hall then?”

Her face contorts into a frown he cannot find adorable (he does). He wonders if she’s a little delirious. “Didn’t faint.”

He’s already turning, slowly striding down the hall. Her quarters aren’t far in the Avengers Facility - a convenient couple of hallways because Tony’s really not a fan of wandering through a maze just to get to his lab - but she’s already faded against his chest when they get there.

“Maria, I need you to wake up for a minute.” 

She does with a groan and a glare. He has to bite the inside of his cheek pretty hard to stop the laughter tumbling out. He’s never seen this Maria and as much as he definitely likes the normally controlled lieutenant, he finds this side of her both intriguing and endearing.

Like he needed another layer to his emotions surrounding this woman.

(Natasha teases the hell out of him for it, has found allies in both Wanda and Sam. But he’s not stupid enough to think Maria’s willing to give him so much as the time of day outside of the work they do and regardless of how well they work together.)

“I just need your hand, sweetheart,” he says, the endearment slipping out despite the fact that he knows, were she in good health, she’d kick his ass for it. He can’t help himself, not when she’s so uncharacteristically weak. “Your biometrics.”

She glances around and her eyes widen. “No. No. Fine.”

“You’re not fine,” he says patiently, adjusting his grip as she writhes. “You have a nasty fever.”

“No.”

He sighs. “Just. Humour me? For once?”

Maria glares, but it is so, so weak, her eyes fluttering as her body tries to fight the fever without help.

“Your hand.”

She makes a weak grunting sound, but does as he asks, pressing her thumb to the scanner. It takes her four tries and Steve has to stomp very, very hard on the worry that rises in him.

The door slides open and he steps into her quarters. Simple, spartan, but he can smell her in the air, can see the used coffee mug left on the counter. There’s paperwork spread over the island and her bed is military made.

“Bed or couch?” 

“Couch,” she says, but her hands clench in his t-shirt again. He does his best not to read into it, to simply chalk it up to his body heat against the chill of her fever. Instead, he focuses on setting her down as gently as he can, jostling as few of the aches as he can manage. She still groans and makes a disgruntled sound when he pulls away. 

He can’t help the way he leans in, the way he presses his lips to her forehead. God, she’s so hot. “Tylenol?” he asks quietly. 

She waves a hand and he takes that to mean he can go searching for it. It doesn’t take him long - the bathroom cupboard comes stocked with a myriad of different drugs - and he pauses in the kitchen to add a glass of water to the mix. Her eyes have closed in the meantime and he sets the glass and pill bottle on the table while he tugs the blanket off the back of the couch. 

“Maria, sweetheart, wake up for a minute. Just a minute.”

Her eyes flutter and she groans again. “Tablet?”

“Pills first,’ he bargains, because he certainly doesn’t think she’ll last long once she’s settled in. So he watches as she takes the Tylenol, is a little impressed when she swallows half the glass of water with it. He makes a note to pick up some juice or tea. 

Her tablet is within easy reach, and he trades the glass for the electronic device. But she’s still shivering and he’s reluctant to leave her alone before the pills kick in. 

“Sucks,” she murmurs, eyes still so glazed. She tries to curl tighter beneath the blanket while still working but it’s of no use. She lets out a sound between a whine and an irritated groan and Steve sighs. He can’t leave her like this.

“Okay, okay. Come here.”

He lifts her again, settles onto the couch. She struggles for a moment, but he tugs her against his body and, with a violent shiver, her whole body relaxes back into him, actively seeking his body heat. 

“There you go,” he murmurs as she settles, her body still vibrating with small shivers, but not shaking quite so violently. 

He tugs her in close and tight, tucks almost entirely underneath her, her back against his chest. He expects her to work for another few hours, but she barely makes it thirty minutes before the tablet is tipping precariously. So Steve reaches out and takes it from her, sets it on the floor. She whimpers a little as he shifts above her, but settles again when he pulls her back.

“Sleep, Maria.”

She does. 


	33. moonlight serenade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CHWeek 2015 day 1 - Moonlight Serenade

It turns out Frank Sinatra sounds different. 

Well, okay, not really. But it doesn’t seem to carve open Steve’s gut the same way it did before Wanda poked through his brain. There’s a simplicity to it, yes, but there’s also a gentle rhythm, a soothing melody. And even he can admit the sound quality is much better. 

But at the core of it, Steve knows it’s him that’s different. His life and what he wants from it are different. 

They’ve been in the new facility for a few months now and he’s actually kind of proud of his space. It’s not the apartment he’d had in DC where everything looked like his first apartment in Brooklyn. No, his apartment in upper New York State is much more modern. His laptop is tucked beneath a small flatscreen, and a futuristic coffee maker is tucked beside a lethal set of kitchen knives. 

And it feels like home. 

Which explains the Frank Sinatra, carefully loaded onto his new iPod and playing through the Bluetooth speakers he’d splurged on. It’s a tiny little box, but it means he can carry the iPod around and switch songs with an ease he takes pleasure in. 

(It’s not that he avoided technology before Wanda. He looked at it as something that facilitated his job, less like something he could honestly enjoy.)

He hums along with the iPod as he flicks through files on his tablet, his StarkPhone at his elbow. Sam should be checking in any minute now about what Sam still gleefully refers to as their ‘cold case’. In the meantime, he’s absently waiting for Maria, who has taken to stopping by his quarters on her way to her own. 

(She’s not always at the new Avengers’ Facility, of course. She still has her job with SI - which, he’s discovered, she actually enjoys more than she had her official job with SHIELD. What she does with SHIELD now is a little up in the air - and tends to split her time between upstate NY and Manhattan. He’s not sure he’d ever admit out loud just how much he likes when she does her stint in the country.) 

He doesn’t even look up when his door slides open, just flicks through another page in his file. “I’d like to send Sam and Nat to Thailand when Sam gets back. I like their skill sets given what we’re working with there and Nat still has resources.”

He slides an already open beer her way as she settles on the stool next to him. He likes how comfortable she is in his space, the shared leadership role they both inhabit here. She tugs at the tablet as she takes her first swallow, scanning the intel he’s pulled up. “When’s Wilson due back?”

“Soon,” Steve answers, glancing at his phone when it chimes. Dead end. But it doesn’t feel quite as devastating as it used to. His new found acceptance includes the knowledge that Bucky will find him when he’s ready. “Tomorrow, latest.”

She leans back and Steve looks over at her for the first time, the figure hugging red and black dress. She tends to alternate here, half the SI Director of Security, half SHIELD deputy director. He’s not picky about which uniform she dons on a given day. She’s powerful whether she’s wearing SHIELD’s insignia or her own. 

“You okay with that?” 

He offers her a smile, small but genuine. “I am.”

“Good.” And she means it, he can tell. There’s a way she’s settled now too, a calmer way that she interacts with him and the rest of the “new” Avengers. And more comfortable, if the way she closes her eyes is any indication. He’s surprised to hear her start to hum along. 

“You know-”

Her eyes open and she offers him a baleful look. “Rap is not really my style, Captain.” 

He chuckles a little. “Still. Sinatra’s a little out of your time, is he not?”

“The brilliance of the internet,” she replies, her fingers tapping out the beat against the countertop. He watches the pattern of her hands as they follow until the playlist skips and the opening chords of the next song invade his quarters. He chuckles when she releases a happy little hum. 

“It’s Phil’s favourite,” she informs him. “It’s been on his pre-mission playlist for years.”

So Steve does the only thing that makes sense. He holds out his hand. “A dance, Lieutenant Hill?”

She looks at his hand, considers it for a moment in a way he hadn’t expected, before she slides her slim palm into his. “Lead on, Captain.”


	34. that's what I've been trying to tell you

Look, Sam’ll take full credit for it, okay? There isn’t a piece of him that isn’t willing to sit up and tell this story with him playing the role of epic and omniscient matchmaker. 

Even if Steve and Maria tell a different story. 

See, Sam learns early that Steve will not turn down a dare. Well, Steve won’t turn down a challenge, a dare, an off-hand comment that says he maybe kind of sort of can’t do something. Anything that includes the phrase “I don’t think” seems to do it. 

And one day, he uses that knowledge for (evil) good. 

Specifically, the good that will become Steve’s life if he just got off his ass and asked Lieutenant Hill out on a date. A real date. Not the ridiculous things neither Steve nor Maria will actually call a date.

“You know you and Hill are practically dating, right?”

Steve does a spit-take before annoyance blossoms over his features. “Maria and I are friends. We work together in a difficult industry. Why is everyone set on the fact that we’re dating?”

“Uh, ‘cause you are.”

Steve gives him an irritated look. “Men and women can be friends.”

“Not you two. You can’t seriously tell me you’re blind to the tension.”

“There is no tension! We’re friends.”

“Sexual tension.”

It’s too bad Steve’s terrible at lying, Sam thinks. Like, the worst he’s ever seen. The way Steve goes rigid says all Sam needs to know. 

The thing is, Sam knows Steve isn’t near as innocent as the great Captain America would like the world to believe. But more than that, Sam has a set of eyes. Cups of coffee, take-out lunches, unwavering defence of each other and their mission reports and quiet conversations in dark corners. Or, you know. Maria in a stunning formal gown on the arm of Captain Steve Rogers at Pepper’s MassGeneral Children’s Hospital fundraising gala. 

“Sam.”

Sam knows that tone. Half Captain America, half ‘I swear I’m going to injure you’. 

“Really? You’re going to try and tell me I’m wrong?” Sam props his hands on his hips. “When you heard about that Andy Warhol exhibit at the MoMA, who is the first person you thought to take with you?”

“No one else likes his work.”

Sam tactfully refrains from answering with Natasha’s name. “And the Shakespeare festival in Central Park?”

“She said she loves outdoor performances more.”

“How about the fact that you remember something like that? No, better, that she  _told_  you something like that?”

“We’ve worked together a long time. We’re  _friends_.”

“Dude. There is literally no definition of friends that has a man and a woman spending that much time together outside of work.”

“Sam, we are not dating! We are two single people, who have things in common and enjoy spending time together. Yes, okay, we go to the museum together, and she suffered through the opera with me, but we’re equally as happy talking over coffee on a patio or going for a ride outside the city and-”

It washes over Steve in a split second that has triumph rising in Sam before he can even inhale properly.

“Oh my God, we’re dating.”

And Sam will let the language go - and the utter _wonderful_  mocking fodder he’s just been presented - for a bigger prize. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

Steve’s eyes are so panicked when he faces Sam that Sam almost feels a little sorry for the national icon. Almost. 

“What do I do?” 

“You’re hopeless,” Sam sighs as he drops his head to the table. 


	35. SPOILERS - The glass in Maria's foot

It’s not that he doesn’t notice. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. The glass on the floor and even the way Nat’s ginger and careful… So when he sees Maria picking glass out of her foot the only thing that stops him from reaching for her and doing it himself is that he is very,  _very_  angry at Tony. So it isn’t until they’ve all gone their separate ways that he takes the opportunity to hunt her down.

“Hey,” she greets, pulling open the door to her Avengers Tower suite. Steve can see the patches of blood along the hardwood. 

“You probably shouldn’t be walking around. Aren’t you just shoving the glass deeper?” 

She shrugs, but her nonchalance is utterly ruined by her wince. She holds a hand up before he can so much as twitch in her direction. “I will smack you.”

He huffs but settles for following her limping form back to the bathroom. Her sink is littered with tiny, bloody shards of glass. God, he hates when Maria’s humanity is so blatantly on display. 

(Which, he would like to point out, is no reflection on her capabilities. He hadn’t thought much about her during their battle with the Iron Legion. He’s never doubted Maria can take care of herself. But sometimes he forgets that any mission could be their last.

But more than that, he’s seen Maria do some incredible things. It’s easy to forget that she is entirely human, with no super serum or suit of armour to protect her from the rougher missions. Or insane AI’s.)

She sits on the toilet and reaches for the tweezers, but Steve beats her to them as he lifts her left foot into his lap. 

“Not because you can’t,” he begins before she can get indignant. “But because it’s easier for me.”

“I was handling it just fine,” 

Steve bits the inside of his cheek. Maria isn’t the type to pout, but he’s sure she would be otherwise. “You were.”

Not that he’ll argue. A disgruntled Maria is an alive Maria and she can be as disgruntled as she’d like because she is  _alive_. 

He can’t stop himself from running his thumb over the arch of her foot, takes the tweezers to get pieces closer to her toes. He hears her suck in air through her teeth. “Sorry.”

“S’fine,” she says, blowing out a breath. “I’ve had worse.”

“You were terrifying.”

Maria laughs a little. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should,” he says all of the emotion welling up in him now, to see her alive and safe. With only a window’s worth of glass in the soles of her feet. The tweezers drop from his hands as he falls to the floor between her knees. “Maria.”

He hears her breath catch, her eyes widen. They’ve been dancing around this, he knows, all of the missions, the time together, evenings in the common areas… But he’s never been this close to her death, never felt so responsible. He rests his hands tentatively on her knees, slides them up her thighs until he hits the end of her dress. 

“Steve.”

But he’s already pushing up on his knees, desperate, his hand threading through her hair to hold her head still. She lets him kiss her, even kisses him back, her hand on his cheek. There comes a natural end to the kiss, their first kiss, and her eyes are so deep when he forces his open again. 

“Not now,” she breathes. “Steve-”

“I know what I want.”

“I know you do.” He likes the trust that shows, the little twitch of her lips. “But this is the worst timing ever.”

He laughs a little, his head drops. Her hand runs through his hair and he cannot stop the shiver that races through him. 

“There’s a lot you have to do, you and the team. We have jobs to do here.”

“People to save.”

“A world to save.”

He looks up at her. He takes a breath, then a second. “You matter, Maria.”

And maybe it’s stupid because they don’t know what they’re up against, they don’t know what they’re going to be facing and they don’t know if they will come out alive. But Steve is done with letting people pass through his life without also letting them know how much they matter. Not anymore. 

“When all of this is done, we’ll… Catch up.”

“Reevaluate.” 

“That too.” 

He smiles, slides his hands down to her knees again. “Okay. Okay. After we defeat Ultron. In the meantime…”

This time, Maria doesn’t protest at all when he picks up her foot. 


	36. kiss me you idiot

He doesn’t seek her out until long after all of the survivors have been unloaded to local hospitals, and the entire crew of Theta Protocol is settled into clean up mode. He wants to, he can feel the tug on his heart, but they both have jobs to do. No matter what’s between them, Steve knows that the only way he and Maria work is the fact that they both know when the job has to come first. 

It isn’t until they’re back in New York and he’s had the time to clean himself up, until it’s actually sunk in a little bit more that  _they won,_ that he hears the knock on his door that signifies Maria’s arrival. 

“Captain,” she greets, a smile twitching in the corners of her mouth. She’s still in her SHIELD uniform - and God,  _God_ , it suits her - her hair still in that infuriating bun, but she is alive and she is whole and he smiles.

“Lieutenant.”

She rolls her eyes. “Just kiss me, you idiot.” 

He does, of course he does, reaches for her neck to pull her close and hold her tight. His hand threads into that bun, dislodging pins as he does it. Neither of them care, too wrapped up in the press of their bodies. Her head tips back, lets him support her head and just take as her hands grasp at the waistband of his sweats. 

When they break away they’re both panting heavily and Steve finds his hand grasping her hip, harder than he probably should, as he fights back the desperation humming in his blood. 

“It’s been a while since we’ve come that close.”

She snorts out a laugh. “It’s been a year,” she points out, voice bland. “And you were closer to death that time.”

He tugs her head aside so he can bury his face in her neck. “Klein says you were magnificent.”

“Expect anything less, Captain?”

“Of course not.” And he kisses her again, this time slow, thorough. 

She hums a little when he pulls back. “We’ll all live to fight another day.”

“Maybe,” he agrees easily, feels the knowledge settle in his heart. For the first time he really lets that sink in, Sam and Wanda and Vision, and Tony and Natasha, Bruce and Thor. And Maria. “Come on. I bet we can find a trashy reality show to watch.”

“There’s still work to be done.”

Still, he tugs her inside, closes the door behind her when she comes easily. “A wise woman once reminded me we’re not at war, Lieutenant. I think the work can wait until morning.”


	37. i guess this is goodbye

He doesn’t really mean to hunt her down. He should be prepping for facing Ultron, for facing the Maximoffs, but he can’t settle himself enough to prepare. 

So he knocks on her door.

It takes her a minute, longer than he’d anticipated actually, and he picks up the sound of the heavy duty locks disengaging from the door. His back goes up, as it tends to do when he knows Maria’s keeping secrets, but her face is impassive when she opens the door. 

“So. Africa.”

He sighs because they both know how much the humidity bothers him. “Ultron’s after vibranium.”

Her eyebrow arches. “To build a body?”

“That’s our assumption.”

She nods, folds her hands together in front of her. Steve watches the movement, terrifyingly aware that it means she’s keeping something from them, holding something back. 

“I guess this is goodbye.”

He almost rolls his eyes. “Don’t think it’s quite that dramatic,” he replies. “If we can keep him from getting his hands on the stuff, we’ll be fine.”

“And if you can’t?” 

“We’ll need backup.”

She glances back into the room, Steve assumes at whomever she’d been talking to a moment prior. “Backup. I think we can handle that.”

He knows he’s surprised her when he leans in and kisses her forehead. “You always do.”


	38. Wanda goes rooting in Maria's brain / Of all the things I’ve heard, that hurt the most

She’d been entirely for the last-second decision to bring her along. This is her job, this is what she does, coordinate missions from the back end. What they hadn’t anticipated, however, was just how insightful Wanda Maximoff could be when it came to Banner’s biggest fear. 

The thing is, she has to go through Maria to get to Banner.

_It’s Pepper’s swanky office. The Avengers are there, Rhodey and Wilson, too. But this doesn’t feel like a tactical meeting, doesn’t feel like a briefing or a debriefing. Maria’s muscles are tense, hard. It’s an attack._

_“You think you’ll amount to anything more than some sort of shattered princess? It’s only a matter of time before you betray us.”  
_

_Maria breathes through Tony’s first shot. It’s not the first time she’s heard it, most especially in the aftermath of the Triskelion. She’d betrayed SHIELD to take it down, the closest thing she’d ever had to home._

_“You were part of SHIELD, but you were willing to burn it to the ground. If that’s how you treat your friends, how the hell do you treat your enemies.”  
_

_Arguments well in her throat, fast, hot, angry. Wilson’s wrong; so, so wrong. It had been about more than that, about more than loyalty to an organization, a logo. She’s always been loyal to herself first._

_“We’re too much alike, you and me. We’ll do whatever we can to make sure we’re on top. No matter the cost.”  
_

_It shouldn’t feel like a weakness, that dead-set loyalty to herself. And of all of the people to call her out on it, the Black Widow - who, contrary to most reports, knew what bone-deep loyalty was, what it felt like - was the biggest hypocrite._ _But it’s not the angry words that hurt. She’s heard angry words her whole life, how useless, how much of a burden she was. And she isn’t, not now. Wilson, Tony and Nat cannot convince her of that._

_She’s not sure what draws her eyes to Steve. His face is devastating. It’s not anger there, it’s hurt. It’s something more that simple betrayal._

_“You made me believe we could be something, Maria.”  
_

_The way he says her name will always make her shake and shiver, wonderful and beautiful. He makes her feel like more._

_“I thought we’d turned a corner. You told me about your father.”  
_

_Glass in her feet, red dress smudged with soot and ash, her feet in his lap and tweezers in his hands as he tried to understand why a couple (thousand) shards of glass weren’t going to keep her down for long._

_“But you’re still keeping things from me. You’re still keeping secrets. You still can’t trust me.”  
_

_She does, oh God she does, and she’s worked so hard to do so, to soften herself for him. Not because she needs a man but because he’s always made her believe that he would never stand in her way. He would support her, he trusted her, but he would never, ever stand in her way._

_And in return, neither of them had to be alone._

_“I love you, Maria.”  
_

_Her breath hitches because no. He can’t. He shouldn’t. Hadn’t that been what he’d been saying? Him and Nat; Tony and Wilson. How untrustworthy she was, how hard and cold and unfeeling. How terrible she is at forming attachments, at building relationships outside of work._

_“I love you,” he repeats. “I thought you loved me. I figured it was something you didn’t have to say and that… it was always okay because you showed me.”  
_

_As often as she could, because words don’t come easy to her._

_“But it was a lie wasn’t it? Just another lie to keep yourself safe. You’re not capable of it, of love. It’s not in your makeup.”  
_

_She has to swallow around the ball of tears because oh God. Of all the things he could have said, that hurts the most. It’s not supposed to. Not with how often she’s accused of being uncaring, unfeeling. Steve had never believed it, had been the first one to sit her down and tell her he knew it wasn’t about how much she didn’t care, but about how much she did._

_Her breath catches, hitches. Her chest is tight and hot. She’d let him make her vulnerable, make her weak. She’d let him burrow his way under her barriers, let herself think that a career woman like her could make it work with a man like Steve._

_“I was wrong.”  
_

“Maria. Maria, come on sweetheart, snap out of it.”

She gasps, chokes, coughs hard. “Steve.”

“Oh thank God, there you are.”

Her gaze clears, and she finds herself curled in a corner of the quinjet. It takes a minute for her mind to follow, and she finds herself shaking at cobwebs. “Banner?”

“Tony’s handling it,” he says, voice tight. “She got to you.”

“No.” But Maria’s shaking, shivering in the aftermath, her heart still hammering in her throat. “No, I’m fine.”

“You are not.” His voice is hard, stiff. “What did she show you? What did she make you believe?”

“Nothing,” she answers, pushing at his hand, pushing at him. “Nothing.”

“Something.” 

And she finally looks up at him, sees the utter devastation on his face. She considers shoring herself up against it, against him, but tips into him instead, her hands white-knuckled on his uniform. Helpless. She hates herself. 

Steve’s hand weaves through her hair and it shouldn’t comfort her, but it’s so Steve, so  _them_ , that she feels the tension leak out of her just a little. Just enough. Because when she opens her mouth to reiterate she’s fine, to lie to him, it’s not what comes out at all. 

“We were a lie.”

His fingers press against her skull. It should hurt, his anger on her behalf, but it grounds her. Keeps her tethered to here and now, rather than wrapped up in her head. 

“You thought I was lying to you. That I could never love you.”

“You do,” he tells her deep and fierce. “I know you do.”

She swallows. “Are you sure you’re not just convincing yourself I do?”

“Yes.”

There isn’t a trace of hesitation in the single syllable and Maria relaxes further. 

“Maria.  _Maria.”_  

She lets him adjust her until he can meet her gaze, blue eyes angry, flinty, protective. 

“I don’t need the words. Not with you. Words from you don’t mean a damn thing. You can lie, you have lied, you will continue to lie if it will save the world. I don’t put stock in what you say.” His hands cup her cheeks, make her stay still and focused on him. “What you do matters. Your actions. The way you curl into me when we’re watching a movie, the way you’ll let me make you tea when you have a nightmare, the way you let me watch your back in the field.”

She’s holding her breath. She doesn’t realize it until it shakes out of her chest, this wet rattling thing that worries her because dammit, she will not let Wanda Maximoff make her cry. 

“You don’t need anyone,” he whispers to her, rests his forehead on hers. “You will never need another person, but you let us stand beside you. You choose to let us do that, to let me do that. We’re not some fairytale, Maria. Don’t let her make you believe it should be.”

She sucks in air, feels it level her just a bit. “Are you in love with me?” 

He chuckles as he kisses her forehead. “Of course I am. How could I not be?”

Her knuckles clench on his uniform shirt and she knows he can feel it. “You know-”

“I do,” he reassures her, kisses her forehead, her nose, then her lips. “I never doubted it.”

And maybe she doesn’t need him, maybe he doesn’t need the words, but there’s a certainty that settles in her stomach as she looks at him. 

“Then stop moping, Captain. We have a world to save.”

He grins. 


	39. revealing they're actually married

At the first moment of calm, he goes looking for his wife. Not that any one knows, but no one stops him. Not with the look on his face. 

He finds her surrounded by the mess of battle, broken glass and his team. He barely takes note though, of Clint and Nat pressed shoulder to shoulder off to one side, Tony, Thor and Vision conversing quietly in front of the shattered window and even Fury who is  _right there_. His eyes are on her. 

He interrupts Klein mid-sentence when he takes her wrist, when he spins her into his body and takes her mouth. He swallows her gasp in that kiss, presses the wrist he holds against her back to arch her body into his. 

“Well I’ll be damned,” Tony says, though Steve barely hears him over the pounding of blood in his ears. 

They’d come close. So close. He’d been so sure, from the second Nat had suggested maybe they wouldn’t make it out alive. 

“Hi, Soldier.” 

He chuckles as finally takes a good look at her, messy from battle, but alive and whole. His hand presses agains the wedding band tied just inside her belt, an exception to their normal rules. He tugs on his dog tags, pulls the chain with her engagement and wedding rings from around his neck. “Lieutenant.”

“Are those wedding rings? Wait, wait. You got  _married_?!”

They’re still ignoring Tony, still ignoring Thor’s smug look and Klein’s mask of utter shock. All he can see is her, all he can think is how close he came to not being here, to never walking through this ritual again. His dog tags fall to the floor as he reaches for her hand, her fingers slim and cool against his broad palm. He slides the band on first, then the subtle diamond and watches her chest rise and fall with the same shaky breath it always does. 

“Not exactly the way I figured we’d share the news,” she murmurs to him, even as she tugs his band from her waist. 

“Me either,” he promises, holding out his hand. “but after everything we went through with Ultron, I’ll be damned if I go another day without the world knowing what you mean to me.”

His wife. 

His forever.

His everything.

She pauses with his ring half way on his fingers. She raises an amused eyebrow. “Dear God, you are such a sap.”

He waits until the cool gold settles against his knuckles before yanking her in again, kissing her until his lungs burn. “And you picked me anyway.”


	40. Steve doesn't mean to draw Maria (but he does)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> blinkbackatear prompted: The ice surrounding your heart is juxtaposed to the fire behind your eyes and god, you are the most beautiful warzone i have ever touched

He doesn’t mean to draw  _Her._

Drawing is what he does, it’s how he stays sane, and even after the Chitauri attack New York it takes him a while to decide what he’s going to do with his free time. The road trip is a start. He can’t even remember what city he stopped in, which store he picked up the book and pencils from, but somewhere in the middle of Ohio, he realizes he’s drawing her.

At first, they’re blurry, undetailed sketches. He’s already drawn Natasha’s fierce face before leaping onto that alien bike, already has a picture of Tony, exhausted and weary, Iron Man faceplate flipped up so he can stuff his face with shawarma. He’s got the haunted look in Clint’s eye and the sad triumph on Thor’s, but he can’t seem to pin down Maria Hill.

(He has a number of discarded sketches of her, torn holes in his book of places where he got too frustrated to keep going. Sometimes she’s too soft, sometimes too hard, sometimes warrior, sometimes woman. It’s never  _right_.)

It’s a drawing he’s started and stopped a handful of times, a lot of rough edges and rougher ideas, but as he takes in the wide open road, the wind through his hair, the picture of her, scratch on her cheek but tall and strong pops into his head.

He pulls over and draws her right then and there, fierce and soft, warrior and woman, exhausted and strong. There’s fire in her eyes and ice on her face and he feels the way his heart thunders in his chest. He doesn’t stop until it’s too dark to see and only goes as far as the closest diner to finish the drawing.

“Girlfriend?” the waitress asks as she fills his coffee at 2am, as he erases one line to smooth it out, too hard on her neck but too soft on her shoulders.

“No,” Steve answers.

The waitress props her hip on his table. “Reminds me of the Valkeries, you know? Mythical. Norse, I think. Either that or the Amazons.”

Warrior women. He likes that. “You wouldn’t be wrong.”

“In my experience, women like that… they don’t realize both’s an option.”

He looks up then. “That’s perceptive.”

She shrugs. “It’s a 24-hour diner. We get all kinds. But those? They’re haunted. Too tough to know how to be anything else. S’a hard life to live, lonely like that.”

He hadn’t thought about it that way, not really. He’d never taken the time to think of each of them, alone in the world but with the team. And who did she have? Fury? In a world where Romanoff had made it clear being a woman and being equal were still two different things. 

How maybe he and Hill weren’t all that different.

“It is,” he finds himself murmuring, fingers brushing over the strength in the line of her jaw. Then he looks up. “The bill, when you get the chance.”

“Coming right up, honey.”

He finishes that cup of coffee and his drawing, then climbs on his bike and points it back towards New York. He had plenty of people there who didn’t deserve to be alone. 


	41. Sharing a bath

“Maria?” 

Her eyes float open at his voice and she pushes herself up from her recline. Water sloshes around her, laps a the edge of the tub. “Bathroom.”

He appears in the doorway a moment later in the ratty sweats he leaves in his locker for these post mission trips home. He’s always been adamant about that, separating their work from their home lives. It’s been an adjustment for her, but she can’t argue that her urge to systematically eliminate human stupidity in the world has definitely lessened. 

A small, tired smile spreads on his face. “May I?”

She hums her consent, slides herself forward just a little. He makes quick work of his sweats, his t-shirt, drops them both into the basket by the door. He’s already clean, thank God, and she lets him nestle her right up against his chest. Her head tips back as she settles in, as his hands trace over her body as he reacquaints himself. 

“Good?”

“Good,” he agrees. “As simple as we’d thought.”

“Injuries?” 

“Nothing to worry about, ma’am,” he teases, his mouth against the side of her head. He always does this when he gets home, takes the time to what she always thinks of as luxuriating in their togetherness. It’s not because they’re not demonstrative outside of their home but simply because he’s been away. 

So she lets her eyes close again, sinks into the feel of his broad palms stretching across her stomach, his lips pressing against her shoulder. 

He’s home.


	42. caught under mistletoe

He doesn’t seek her out, per se, but the minute he steps into the Christmas party and spots the mistletoe (okay, after he’s found her, beer in hand, laughing with Rhodey) the plan forms. 

They’ve been debating for weeks the best way to tell the team that they’re doing more than just spending the night together for sex. Not because they’re hiding it, but because it seems they’re both so damn private and if one more person tells him to call “that nice nurse” (Sam) or “that pretty waitress” (Natasha) he’s going to absolutely lose it. 

They still hadn’t figured it out, but looking at the innocent plant, Steve finds a grin slowly spreading across her face. 

“You look like the cat that ate the canary.”

He’s still grinning when he looks back down at her, glances away for only a moment when Bucky slaps his shoulder with an impressive eyeroll that Steve knows means “don’t screw this up” before his eyes are back on hers. It only takes her a moment to cotton on. 

“Lieutenant,” he greets, and cocks his head to the side. She’s confused, sure, but she lets him guide her a handful of steps to the right. 

“What is it?” she murmurs. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

“Look?”

“Like you’re about to cause trouble.”

“It’s my normal face.”

“Uh huh. Spill.”

He doesn’t have to. A moment later Thor releases a triumphant noise. “Lieutenant! It seems you and the Captain have stepped under mistletoe! Am I to understand there is a Midgardian custom attached?”

Steve would roll his eyes (Thor knows more about Earth customs than he lets everyone - Tony, Sam,  _Jane_  - believe) but when he looks down at the woman so, so close, her eyes are sparkling. 

There’s no hesitation in his hand when it rises to slip beneath the fall of her hair. There’s no resistance when he tugs her closer and she is certainly as eager as he is when he leans down to kiss her. There’s really nothing nice about the kiss either (maybe because there’s nothing ‘nice’ about the insanity that is their relationship) but he feels the cool condensation of her beer against the back of his neck, and the heat of her hand at his hip and angles her head to get just that little bit deeper. 

The place is silent when they pull back, both of them panting. It’s only Clint that looks entirely nonchalant as he pushes himself up and moves to stand beside Tony, arms folded over his chest. 

“So about those test arrows.” 

(Turns out the pool had money attached. Steve wakes up one morning to find Maria counting bills while Clint leans on the door. He’s supposed to lecture them both on betting on personal relationships but he approaches Maria instead, kisses her cheek. 

“Breakfast?”

She grins. “My treat.”)


	43. jealous steve

“I don’t think long faces are allowed on your birthday.”

Steve spins his bottle through the condensation on the table as Natasha slips into the booth across from him. She’s right, really. Not that he’s particularly in the habit of being morose on his birthday. Actually, he’s no longer in the habit of being morose on most days. He finally feels at home, he’s got Bucky back in the fold and he’s doing what he was meant to do. 

“Hey.” 

He looks up when she kicks him and sighs. “It’s nothing.”

“Steve.”

No. No. This time he will not give into her. Because this time it’s pathetic and honestly,  _honestly_  it’s not something Natasha needs to know. “It’s stupid.”

“ _Steve_.”

Nope. Not going to happen. He can resist her. Of course he can. It’s just Natasha. Right up until  _she_  laughs and he turns towards the sound regardless. 

He’s not upset. Not really. Maria’s not his (she’s not anybody’s) and he is more than happy to let Bucky do anything that keeps him happy but it just… It’s harder than he’d thought it’d be to watch them be happy together. 

Natasha’s eyes are knowing when he turns back to her. 

“Don’t.”

“Call you an idiot?”

“i’ve always been bad with women, Nat.”

She hums, a little smile playing over her mouth. He knows that smile, the one that says she knows something that’s going to turn his world on it’s head. 

“Have you always been blind, too?”

“Colour blind,” he retorts. “But the serum fixed that.”

She leans back in the booth, comfortable, really comfortable. This isn’t a Natasha that’s on edge (not that he doubts she has weapons on her, not that she needs them) but one that is utterly content. 

“James doesn’t want Maria.”

“Nat-”

Her eyebrow goes up and it’s enough to have his mouth snapping closed. “Are you really going to accuse your best friend of cheating on me?” 

Steve sucks in a breath, surprised. Sure, Nat and Bucky spend plenty of time together but he hadn’t known- Hadn’t even suspected, actually. Or maybe more hadn’t been looking. 

Natasha leans forward again, this time her face intense and maybe more than a little annoyed. “Stop moping around and talk to her, Steve.”

“How?” 

Another eye roll. “I’d go with the truth. I’ve heard she’s really into that.”

He huffs on a laugh. “You’re terrible at this.”

“Maybe, but which one of us is getting laid on the regular.”

He groans. She’s been testing out ‘modern phrases’ on him for weeks. “Make you a deal: I’ll go talk to her, you never, ever say ‘on the regular’ again in your life.”

“You go talk to her now and I’ll give you half my winnings.” She grins at his narrowed eyes. “James bet you wouldn’t. And I have your actual birthday in the team pool.”

He will never, ever tell her that it’s Bucky’s mistrust in him, and more importantly the inherent challenge in the suggestion, that has him shoving his way out of the booth. Maria looks casual and content when she catches his eye, a smile spreading across her face that makes his chest catch. 

“May I cut in?” 

Bucky narrows his eyes but steps back, lets Steve slip into place, takes Maria’s hand in his own. “Natalia talk to you?”

His spine straightens. “If she did?”

He grumbles and weaves expertly off towards the redhead, sitting smugly right where he left her. Maria hums a little. 

“They’re good together.”

He huffs a laugh, drops his head to her shoulder because she is here and this is real and, well, why not? “Am I the only person who didn’t notice?”

“You’ve been busy pining,” she retorts. “How about this: you take me to lunch tomorrow with your winnings and I’ll tell you all about it.”

He’s not stupid enough to say no.


	44. Maria gets jealous when Steve asks Sharon out

She hears about it from Natasha. And that, really, is what gets her. 

She has a file for him, more information on Bucky, this time out of Africa, and they both know there’s nothing more important to Steve than finding Bucky. But Natasha, curled up in a corner of the common living area in Avengers’ Tower, blinks once before informing her Steve’s preparing for a date with Sharon. 

Turns out that hurts. 

It shouldn’t, and she really wishes it didn’t but as she walks away from Natasha she can’t deny the tight feeling in her chest. It doesn’t matter how many times she’d told herself this strange friend-slash-colleague hybrid thing they’ve got going on is enough, that it cannot be more, for his sake as well as hers, it’s just as hard not to be attracted to the man beneath the legends. 

And she is. Attracted. Really, she’s thought he’d been too, the way they’d migrated to cold and distant information exchanges to sparring sessions and movie nights, breakfast when he’s in the city. It had started to feel comfortable and intimate and yes, okay, fine, she’d wanted it. 

He, apparently, didn’t. And he hadn’t even seen fit to tell her. She feels like she’d remember having a conversation with him about the idea of dating his First Love’s (captials and all) niece. 

She goes back to her quarters, of course, pulls up a new e-mail. She won’t even have to see him if she just attaches the file to the email and-

“Maria?”

She starts (she has  _got_  to stop getting lost in her head when it comes to him because she is not that kind of woman. She isn’t.) and turns. He looks good in jeans, a plain button-down instead of the plaid. “Hey.”

“Welcome back.”

Her smile trembles around the edges and she knows it, but it’s also an involuntary action. His voice sounds so warm, so excited to see her. “Thanks.”

“Nat said you were looking for me?” 

She forces herself to turn away as he comes towards her. “New information. It can wait. You have a date.”

She hears his footsteps stop. “Not for an hour.”

She hums to hide the lump in her throat. “Don’t want to be late. Bad impression on Agent Carter.”

He blows out a breath. “Did Nat tell you everything?”

She shrugs because that stings too. “Were you going to?”

“I don’t know,” he says after a moment. 

She nods slowly. “At least you’re honest.”

“Maria-”

“Your date, Captain. I’ll email the information over.”

The thing about Steve is that he always knows when he’s being dismissed. She closes her eyes as she hears his footsteps retreat glad he can’t see her face. Her perfected blank look is not at all up to par. She really doesn’t like being taken off-guard. 

“I’ll…”

She thinks for a moment he’s going to say something meaninful, something that’ll reassure her she hadn’t been imagining his face, the warmth in the curl of his arm over her shoulders. 

“I’ll get back to you about that intel.”

She really doesn’t like being wrong either.

* * *

The doorbell wakes her. 

She tends to get early bedtimes when she stays at the Tower. She’d taken advantage of the huge tub in her suite and the endless channels to get Steve out of her head before hitting the sheets. The doorbell is unexpected. 

She rubs at her eyes as she wanders to the door and presses the screen for the camera outside. Her stomach flips over when she registers that it’s Steve outside her door, looking tired, twisted up and worried. 

So of course she lets him in.

“It’s late.”

“I know,” she replies, even as she steps back. “But good dates always go long.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

She gives him the best smile she can, hoping he chalks the lower wattage to sleep rather than emotion. “You do now.”

Except instead of wandering away he reaches out for her, catches her arm and yanks her into him. “You were supposed to tell me not to go.”

She wiggles against him, has to a little because he’s got a palm on the back of her head and she is not having this discussion with her face buried in his shirt. “What? Why?”

“Preferably because it’s true. Because you didn’t want me going out on a date with Sharon.”

She takes a minute because if she doesn’t she’s going to go stiff and give the game away. Better she takes her next question at face value rather than reading into it. “Why would I do that?” 

“Because you felt it too. Feel it too.”

His chest all but caves in on itself beneath her cheek and her eyes widen a little at the strength of the emotion in him. “The hell?”

He huffs again. 

“Did you-” She pushes herself back, but he doesn’t release her, doesn’t let her go further than the length of his arms. And she is not strong enough to break his hold. “Tell me you didn’t ask her out to make me jealous. Tell me we didn’t revert to high school. No, junior high.”

He glances away. “I… I’m not sure I can do that. Not and tell the truth.”

And he will always, always tell her the truth. 

She takes that in for a moment, then makes a strange noise as she takes a swing at him. Then another. 

“God you’re an idiot.”

He winces but doesn’t argue. He never does when she’s right. 

She hits him again. “An actual idiot. What were you thinking?!”

“That I’d been imagining it all. And Sharon was here for some taskforce and Sam kept pushing-”

She drops her head to his chest and should not like it so much when his arms come around her, tug her in closer. “Actual. Living. Breathing. Idiot.”

“Yes. But um-”

She tilts her head up when he stays silent for a few more beats, when she hears his heart speed up in his chest. “Your idiot?” 

She’d known it was coming, of course, but faced with it now it makes her nervous. The thing is, Maria’s never been the type to let a little case of nerves stop her from taking a leap. 

And this is a hell of a leap.

“Take me out for breakfast in the morning and we’ll see.”

His smile is everything. Luminous and joyful and spread so wide across his face she thinks maybe even that all-American jaw should be aching. “It’s a date.”


	45. Steve adopts a stray dog

The whimper gets him first. 

It’s singular and tiny and Captain America kicks in before he even really thinks about getting his shield. Turns out, it’s a good thing because as he follows the whimpers deeper and deeper into the alley, he discovers a fair-sized box. 

Inside is a single black puppy. 

“Hey buddy,” Steve says, his voice automatically lowering. “Hey. You’re okay.”

But the puppy shies away, curls tighter in the corner. 

“You’re okay. I won’t hurt you.” 

He even holds his hand a few inches away, lets the puppy decide when to approach. It’s a slow, patient thing. Honestly, he just keeps talking, keeping his voice low and soothing. Eventually, the puppy comes closer, sniffs at his fingers. When it licks at one, Steve slowly, so, so, slowly, reaches out. 

The little thing all but curls into his palm. Steve lifts it slowly, checks the tiny body for anything injuries or identifying marks. There’s nothing and he sighs. 

“Looks like someone left you behind, huh?” 

Something Steve is definitely not going to do. He doesn’t know if his housemate (girlfriend? Live in lover? Maria.) feels about dogs, or pets in general, actually, but he’s sure as hell not leaving Spot out to the elements. 

Spot. 

Spot the dog.

“There you are,” comes her voice the minute he opens the apartment door. “Did you stop at our place for cof- That’s not coffee.”

He winces, just a little. He may not know about Maria and pets, but he does know Maria is not a fan of surprises. 

“That’s a puppy.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes come up, startled blue, and meet his. “We can’t keep a puppy, Steve.”

“Why not?”

“Because we have crazy jobs? Because dogs are a lot of work? Because we don’t have anything for a puppy?” 

He sighs, a little disappointed despite the fact that he’d been so excited. “She was alone in the alley.”

“She?”

He shrugs and steps towards her. If he’s going to argue with her, he’s going to need coffee. “Or he.”

“Alley or no alley we can’t just adopt a- Hey!”

He drops Spot in her arms, only stays long enough to watch her arms instinctively cradle the tiny body and ensure Spot’s not going to freak. 

“There’s no owner, Maria. And we both know how often dogs like that get picked up, let alone adopted from the pound or Humane Society.”

“It’s more likely when they’re a puppy.”

Except her voice has lowered, lost it’s sharp edge and he looks up from pouring his coffee to find her bending her dark head over the dogs. Huh.

“She’s alone. And there are plenty of people we can leave her with when we leave.”

She sighs. “We have to walk it.”

“Both of us run anyway.”

“And it’s going to chew through everything.”

“Spot.”

“Sorry?”

He waves at the dog. “Spot.”

“Of course,” she says and blows out a breath. “Of course you gave it a name. You’re not supposed to give it a name, Steve.”

“It needs a name!”

Silence falls and he sips at his coffee as he watches her cuddle the puppy. 

“We’re going to have to find a vet,” she finally says, even as she strokes Spot’s little head. ‘And a pet store.”

“I’ll look it up.”

“We’ll have to find another apartment,” she goes on. “We don’t have pets on the lease.”

“Tony’s been making noise about the Tower.” 

She shoots him a look like it’s legitimately the craziest thing she’s ever heard him say. “A new apartment.”

He leans in and kisses her, laughs when Spot yips at being jostled. He doesn’t care. They’re keeping Spot. “Deal.”


	46. Outsider's POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Outsider POV of Captain hill's secret relationship?

It’s not easy to see. That’s what I’ve figured out in all my time watching them. It’s hard. They’re good. Almost too good. Except for the little things. And even then, those took a little while for me to put together.

Like, he touches her. Which, I guess doesn’t seem so weird on the outside, but when you know someone like Hill, you know without a shadow of a doubt that touching her is like touching a live wire. Except Rogers is never daunted by it. Hell, I’m not sure he’s even threatened by it. He just reaches right through that electric barrier and touches her. It’s not even… sexual or anything, nothing that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary if it weren’t Hill. Hell, I’ve seen him hug Maximoff more than once and it’s not like Rogers, Barton and Wilson have a problem rough housing. 

So. That’s a little weird. But it’s kind of not as weird as the little smiles she’s shoot him when she thinks no one’s looking. Well. Maybe that’s not wholly true either. It’s more… I mean, I’m looking for it. Trying to see behind the lines and behind the mask. Even Romanoff lets hers down from time to time and I’ve seen Hill hold her own against the Black Widow so it’s certainly not out of the norm to think Hill couldn’t beat someone to a pulp for daring to make fun of a smile. 

But she still does it, I’ve seen it. It’s not the harsh thing she tries on when she’s kind of glad you’re there or the one where she’s finally relieved someone in this organization can do their job. There’s something else, indescribable and I’m not about to try it. He makes it look so easy, like getting Hill to spit out a genuine smile isn’t just about as hard as infiltrating the US senate in the green man suits from the Vancouver Canucks. It makes me wonder if he makes her laugh when it’s just the two of them, if he knows magical formulas for everyone that puts them immediately at ease enough to let down their guard. 

And then there’s the missions. Oh my god the missions. Look, in this organization, I get there’s a kind of kill or be killed mentality about missions. Sometimes. It’s not the ideal (there are missions excepted, though there’s a specialized Strike Team Delta for those or something) but in an international spy organization…. it’s a given. Danger is. It’s not that either of them _worry_  per se, not in a way that could be construed as actual worrying like people who don’t put their lives on the line every day worry but it’s something. I know it’s something. 

It’s the way her mouth twitches when Rogers is on the comms, the way he argues with her when a piece of the mission puts her in danger he feels is unnecessary. Sure, he does the latter for everyone but there’s something in the way he argues about it when it’s Hill’s life on the line that… well, I would swear on both of my parents’ lives that it’s not simple professional concern. 

Not that she’s much better. It’s just anger for her, an expression of sailor-esque language that is _beyond_ impressive and often multi-lingual. Hill doesn’t make a secret of her displeasure, even if Rogers doesn’t back down for even a second. It’s kind of crazy to watch, actually, the way they go at each other in concern. Hill’s like a damn cat, puffed fir and angry hissing. He’s an immovable rock. It’s terrifying and entertaining. (Benneti brought popcorn into the sitroom once. It was worth the reprimand to watch them argue over who was going to put themselves in more danger.)

They’re also so quiet about it. There are a lot of murmured conversations. I assume they make plans that way, intimate whispers over mission debriefs and once (at least when I was around) a bet about dinner made over the comms mid-mission. Whatever ‘the usual terms’ are, Rogers won and Hill didn’t seem all that upset about it. 

Except once. Just once and I wasn’t supposed to be there. But the helicarriers are _huge_ and I’d taken a turn off my usual path to avoid a tac team coming towards me and it was just a quiet little hall. They weren’t even doing anything, not really. Rogers had his hands around her elbows, hers were across her stomach and it was the rawest expression of emotion from either of them. It’s how I know now, intimately, that they worry about each other on missions. Regardless, I wasn’t _trying_  to eavesdrop, really I wasn’t, but they were right there and I heard him murmur to her about ‘when we get back’ and heard her give this wet kind of scoff. 

(I found out later it was what could have easily been a suicide mission for Rogers and Romanoff. In case we needed more evidence of the insane things they can do.)

And that’s not the kind of moment you have with just another agent or just another colleague. That’s the kind of moment you have with someone who means the world to you when you could lose them. 

The point is, I’m going to make a mint off of Waringa in carpool because dammit, this is a thing. I know it is. It’s just really exceptionally hard to prove it. (Because they’re really damned good.)


	47. Sam Rags on Steve for Always Talking About Maria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: A random bit I wrote at 2 in the morning about Sam imitation Steve:“Man, literally every other sentence you say has to do with Maria. ‘Oh, excuse, I have to take this call from Maria. I need to run some things by with Maria. I have to help Maria do something. I have to go on a hot date with Maria where we eat fancy food and have kinky food sex afterwards.” Could you expand on it?

Steve tilts his head towards Sam, calmly unwrapping his hands. “We have a strict rule about mixing food and sex.”

Sam has to blink a moment, taken aback and off-guard. And of course he would be. While the Avengers have pools that have pools going on about the relationship between Steve and Maria, Sam can’t say he’d ever expected Steve to all but admit it. “I really don’t want to hear about your sex life with Hill.” 

Steve arches an eyebrow, because he is a little shit and people seem dead set on forgetting about it. “You sure about that? You seem pretty interested.” 

“Because you just made me a ridiculous amount of money.” 

Steve hums still utterly unfazed. “I’ll get my half when the others pay up.” 

Sam feels the laughter bubble up. “Half? No way, man. I’m keeping that half as hazard pay.”

“You asked,” Steve replies mildly but Sam can see his mouth twitching. 

“I was pointing out how often you talk about her.”

“Should I point out how often you talk about Sharon?”

Sam puts his hands up in defeat. “Nope, nah. I’m good man.”

Steve nods. “So half?”

Sam sighs. “Half.”

Steve grins. 


	48. I Love You via Comms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Steve blurts out “I love you,” over comms when Maria and Project Theta show up during the battle of Sokovia and everyone’s (seriously, there were tons of people communicating during the battle) reactions?

He does not mean to say it. Of course he doesn’t. It’s not his fault the woman he is utterly gone over is the most fantastic person on the face of the planet. 

And that’s his unbiased opinion. 

He takes shit for it of course, Tony and Clint chirping over the coms about Maria being the one with the pants, about the way he changes his fighting style knowing Project Theta is taking care of the civilians. 

“Next time Cap’s going to give up, get Hill on the phone.”

“I thought Cap was all about justice and freedom, not about women.”

“I didn’t think he even knew what a woman interested in him looked like.”

Steve - who is knee deep in breaking robots, Tony, it would be nice if you could get back in the game, thanks - mostly ignores it. He has to, for self-preservation reasons. 

Plus, he knows without a shadow of a doubt he’s going to take shit from the woman herself when all is said and done here. 

If he survives. 

( _He survives and she looks at him with daggers in her eyes and a cut on her cheek. God, is it any surprise he loves her?_

_“Over the comms?”  
_

_“It just slipped out.”  
_

_“So you didn’t mean it.”  
_

_“Of course I meant it.”  
_

_“Good.”  
_

_“That’s it?”  
_

_A little smirk, knowing and teasing. Jesus, he’s screwed. For the rest of his life. “I’m covered in grime and blood. Unlike some people, I know better.”_ )


	49. Steve visits during training

It starts with little hissing whispers. Maria, a long veteran of the physical tests that mark the end of SHIELD training and the beginning of field work and the slog that is being an agent, doesn’t even bother to glance away from the recruits on the mats. Nor does she so much as turn her head when she feels warmth along her right side. 

“Director Hill.” His voice is low and warm and Maria feels her mouth twitch up, even as she rolls her eyes. 

“Captain. Don’t you have better things to do?” 

“Than inspect our rookies? I should know who’s replacing me, shouldn’t I?” 

Maria hears a few giggles and tries not to huff. “You’re a distraction.”

She glances over long enough to see his eyes flick to the observation deck where Maria knows a handful of Avengers are also watching. Her phone’s been vibrating against her hip intermittently with what she knows are Stark’s opinions.

“Am I?” 

Maria knows that deceptively mild voice all too well and slants him a look. 

“I thought ‘teacher’ could be a better descriptor.”

Oh hell no. There’s a reason she’s kept all but Clint and Natasha from becoming any sort of instructor and it has plenty to do with the fact that the majority of the other Avengers are on pedestals where the students are concerned. She wants her recruits to learn, not to ogle.

She says nothing as the fight in front of her finishes, Wilson tossing Carey over her shoulder to the mat. Maria likes Wilson. She has plans for Wilson. But then Steve nudges the back of her shoulder. 

“What do you say, Lieutenant?” 

If Maria’s honest, she has been twitching for it, itching to correct students, to show them how different it is when working with people who have a lifetime of this kind of training. 

“When was the last time you were in a real fight?”

She shivers at the low timbre of his voice as much as she thrills at the challenge. Because Steve will be a challenge, the same way Natasha is, or Bobbi, Melinda. She glances back at the students, their wide eyes and gaped mouths, knows that none of them think she can take Captain America. 

“You’re on.”

It’s agility against strength and they both know it. She watches him for a moment, calm and centred. She’s ready when he attacks, swinging at her quickly. Her arm sings when she blocks the hit and goes in low, just barely dodging a knee to the face. They twist and turn around the mat, a dance as lethally beautiful as any fight of Natasha’s. There’s a point where she almost has him, it really is _so close,_ but he slips away at the last minute and her laugh rings out, bright and clear and _thrilled_.

His eyes are bright when she looks up at him, coated in sweat and grinning. He looks just as joyfully pleased, like he’s never seen her in action before and is impressed. Which she knows is an outright lie. 

Then the siren sounds. 

It’s terrifying, in a lot of ways, the way they both transform with the threat of new battle, stiff and tall and serious. It’s a quick snapped order that sends the recruits on their way seconds before the door to the observation deck opens and the Avengers are thundering down the steps. 

Steve catches her arm before they part, lets his fingertips trail down the back of her elbow. “We’ll finish this later? Mine?”

Maria shivers, because yeah, okay, fighting is one of the things that get her going. “Later, Captain.” 

He grins.


End file.
